


the world was born in smoke and fire (and so were we)

by forgivenessishardforus



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Arranged Marriage, F/M, King!Bellamy - Freeform, Nightbloods, POV Bellamy Blake, POV Clarke, War, attempted genocide, princess!clarke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-24
Updated: 2016-10-11
Packaged: 2018-07-18 01:52:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 88,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7294747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forgivenessishardforus/pseuds/forgivenessishardforus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The crown rests heavy on top of his head, eight pounds of gold encrusted with emeralds and rubies and a thousand tons of responsibility and duty. He can feel its edge digging painfully into the skin of his forehead, can already sense some of his curls getting hopelessly tangled around the prongs. He forces himself to hold still, understanding the importance and uniqueness of this moment.</p><p>He is the first ever king not descended from royal blood. The first king to usurp the previous before his death, and banish him for crimes of inhumanity performed against his people. He is twenty-two years old, and the streets whisper his name.</p><p>“Bellamy Blake,” Marcus Kane, his mentor and first advisor, intones, “King of Polis, Lord of the Stars and Protector of the Earth, you may rise.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: In the ruins of what had been

**Author's Note:**

> I've finally written enough of this fic to feel comfortable starting to publish it. It will be split into ~10 parts, with an update coming (hopefully) every Friday. 
> 
> Let me know what you think! I appreciate any and all motivation to keep writing.

A black bird circles lazily in a sky like ashes. The sun burns weakly through the haze in the east, a dim golden glow. Unlikely that it will break through the heavy cover of clouds, and he doesn’t want it to. The scene in front of him is depressing enough without being bathed in sunlight.

The ground is littered with the crumbling bones of the city that had once been his. Peeling paint like shrivelled flesh, rusted struts like pools of blood, fallen blocks like scattered teeth. The city had bled and died and withered away while he’d been gone. Now that he’s returned at last, the wind seems to whistle through the streets with the voices of the souls that had been lost.

 _You couldn’t have saved them all,_ he tells himself, wishing he believed it. Like a coward, he had run. What kind of king abandoned his people to hide in the shadows? Had he succeeded in saving any of them?

 _Yes._ Octavia was safe. So was Clarke. And they were all that mattered. Harsh, perhaps unfair from someone who was supposed to care for so many, but true.

Where were they now? It had been years since he’d last seen them, disappearing through a passage under the palace and out to sea. He hadn’t heard from them since; no way of knowing what they had been through during the war, where they had gone, if they were safe. He had to believe that they were, and that they would return to him once they knew that they could.

The city’s desiccated bones crunch beneath his feet, sending up puffs of grey dust. Dust like ashes. The entire city looks as though a wildfire had swept through it, leaving desolation in its wake.

For just a moment, he allows himself to remember how things had looked before: buildings of white stone or marble, red brick or simple wood; roofs of woven grass or granite or shimmering tile that reflected the sun. Markets lining the streets, merchants hawking their wares; children running barefoot through the dirt, laughter echoing. He had been one of them, once, although he remembers little of his own laughter. From a young age he had borne a heavy weight, with a sister whose existence needed to be kept a secret. He had sworn he would change the world for her and he had, but at what cost?

“Come, Bellamy,” Kane says quietly at his side, and he realizes with a start that he has come to a halt in the middle of a broken street and the people of the procession are milling uncertainly behind him.

He takes a breath to steady himself before continuing on, trying not to see past the ruin to the beauty that once was.

Out of the ashes of the city, the palace rises, white marble singed black. Of the two stone dragons that had guarded the front gate, one was now missing its head; many of the crenellations are chipped, and the oak door hangs off its hinges. Other than that, the building is, miraculously, untouched. Inside, it smells of dust and despair. The halls are dim, wall sconces empty, and the walls are barren, hangings ripped from their mounts to leave lighter patches of stone where they had once been. The sound of their footsteps on the tiled floor echoes eerily through the too-empty space.

Memories haunt him. He can almost hear her ringing laugh, excited breathlessness as he pulls her into an alcove for a brief moment of privacy. Her lips on his, molten and golden like sunshine. Hair like silk, a waterfall tumbling through his fingers and down her back. Her hands, small and delicate in his own, but full of such strength. Eyes like the sea: stormy and raging one moment, shining and tranquil the next.

There’s an ache in his chest like a bruise. It hurts to be here without her. Here, they had planned their future, looking out over the city from the top of the tallest tower. She had been a rock to him, steadying and calm when uncertainty threatened to knock him off his feet. Someone to hold him. Someone who believed in him.

He takes another breath. It shakes. _Please come home_ , he thinks. _I can’t do this without you._

And then he lifts up a foot and takes a step, and another and another, until his feet have led him to the throne room.

Amazingly, the throne is still there, on a pedestal high above the floor. Kings only sat on that throne once, on the day of their coronation. He would be the first to sit on it twice.

He waits while the throne is lifted down and the red carpet unfurled across the floor. Waits while his people flow around him to form a solemn line on either side of the carpet, a path leading him forward. Kane and Miller stand at the front, one on either side of the throne. He focuses on them instead of the gold-gilded chair as he marches towards the future.

The velvet cushion is faded, all vestiges of plushness warn away by centuries of royal rears; it provides no relief from the hard seat. That’s fine. The position is not meant to be a comfortable one.

His coat is worn, its original black now a faded grey, covered in dust and mud. There are holes in the elbows, several of the buttons have fallen off, and the cuffs are ragged. His boots are scuffed, the knees of his trousers almost worn through. He attempts to hold himself with pride.

Last time he had sat on this throne, he had been twenty-two years old. Street urchin turned knight turned king; feeling lost, uncertain, unready for the power that was being handed to him. Knowing, desperately, that all he wanted was to make things better, to make things good.

Now he’s twenty-seven years old, and the boy he had been back then was lost forever to the harsh reality and sins of the world, burned to ash. He had been hardened in the fires, forged into something new; not someone better, but someone who realized that having power and wishing for something did not make it true.

It was a battle, continuous and constant and always uphill, a battle for his soul, for the world, for his sister, for _her_ ; a battle he had stopped fighting, once, ran away from because its weight became too much to bear.

And he returned today to tell his people that he would continue to fight, and he would never stop—to fight against the monster inside of him, the monster inside all of them, to fight a battle he knew he could never win but one he knew he couldn’t give up on, because he was their king and this was his duty.

Kane reverently lifts the crown from its padded box, places it on his bowed head. It rests there, just as heavy as it had been five years before. He’s ready to carry the weight of it, now.

“Bellamy Blake,” Marcus Kane intones, “King of Polis, Lord of the Stars and Protector of the Earth, you may rise.”

◊◊◊

She dreams of his eyes. After years, the edges and planes of his face have gone blurry in her memory, but she has never forgotten his eyes. Dark brown, fringed by thick lashes, his eyes had always seemed a mirror to her. No matter how stony his face, she had always been able to read his true feelings reflected there. He had wondered aloud, many times, how she knew; she had never told him that his eyes were a doorway to a place deep inside of him, a place he thought no one could see.

In her dream, his eyes are shattered like the last time she saw him, shiny with tears and battling with hopelessness. _Please come home_ , he whispers to her, but she’s not even sure it’s his voice. She can’t remember what that sounds like, not anymore.

 _Home?_ she asks silently. _Where is that?_

 _With me_ , he answers. She can’t see his lips but she can feel them, brushing gently against hers. She can feel his fingers, gentle as a breeze in her hair, untangling the knots that had accumulated there.

She sighs, softly; she has forgotten the details of his face but she will never forget the chapped roughness of his lips, the callouses on his hands, the warmth of him curled around her. She dreams about it most nights; she can feel his warmth now, like the sun on her face—

A voice she does recognize is calling her name, and blearily she cracks open her eyes. It is the warmth of the sun on her face after all, beaming down through the thin canvas of her tent. Octavia, impatient, is standing above her.

“Get up, Clarke,” she says. “Everyone else has been up for hours already.”

“Don’t call me that here,” Clarke says, still half asleep. “I’d have thought you’d figured that out by now.”

Octavia snorts. “Not like anyone’s listening. And don’t change the subject. Get your ass out of bed, _Clara,_ and help with breakfast.” She leaves the tent with a whirl, the same way Octavia does anything—like a storm, like a hurricane—and with a sigh Clarke rolls out of her blankets and pulls on some fresh clothes.

Outside her tent there is a tree, and she pauses to scratch another tally mark into the bark. The marks cover most of the surface of the tree within her reach now; for this one she has to bend down and place it several inches off the ground. She adds them up, silently, although she already knows how long it’s been.

Nine hundred and seventy-one days since they came to this refugee camp by the sea. Two months before that since they first fled Polis and the evil that had taken root there. All told, nearly three years had passed since she had left Bellamy standing alone and forlorn at the palace’s seagate, promising him they would return as soon as they could.

How long had it taken her to forget the details of his face? How long would it be before she forgot his eyes? How much longer would they have to hide here, separate from the world around them? She never had been good at standing still, at passively watching as events moved along without her. The fact that she had been doing just that for nearly three years now was enough to drive her insane. She wanted to _do something_. She wanted to help.

Right now, the only thing she can help with is preparing breakfast for the camp of several hundred, so she makes her way to the large cooking fires in the centre of the makeshift village.

Luna, leader of the camp, is already there, washing berries in a bowl. She’s a leader who isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty, something Clarke admires about her. Raven and Monty are there as well, mixing up vast batches of porridge in large pots. Her nose wrinkles at the sight; porridge had been the only thing on the breakfast menu for the last nine hundred and seventy-one days. Sometimes berries were added for flavor, or pine nuts, or cane sugar, but that didn’t change the fact that it was still porridge.

“Clara,” Luna says in greeting without looking up, “nice of you to join us. Would you mind giving the other two a hand?”

The breakfast line is forming and they’re in the process of scooping porridge into held-out bowls when Lincoln comes riding into camp. He’d been gone for several weeks, hoping to hear some news; the way his horse is panting for breath, slick with sweat, the way he slides to the ground and practically runs over to her, tells her that he’s heard some.

“The war is over,” he announces, the impact of the statement suffering somewhat from his breathlessness. “King Bellamy has retaken the throne. We can go home.”

Such a simple sentence, to have such an effect on her: she drops the wooden spoon she was holding, the porridge on it landing on the ground with a splat, and can only stare at him. The strangest floating sensation has taken root in her stomach and when she speaks, her voice sounds like it’s coming from far away.

“Octavia. We need to find Octavia.”

When she hears the news Octavia throws herself into Lincoln’s arms, kissing him fiercely; when he puts her down she throws her arms around Clarke and holds on tightly. “Home,” she says disbelieving. “We’re going home.”

Things are a blur after that: a rush of packing up tents and belongings, saddling horses, packaging food. All said and done, there are almost fifty of them eager to return to families and homes in Polis.

“Thank you,” Clarke tells Luna before leaving, clasping her hand tightly. “For your hospitality and everything you’ve done for us these past years. The kingdoms of Polis and Arkadia will not forget your generosity.”

“Arkadia?” Luna asks, perplexed.

Clarke smiles, mischievous. “Their queen is my mother and King Bellamy is my betrothed. So you see, your kindness means much to both kingdoms.”

She leaves to join the line of people heading back to Polis while Luna’s mouth is still hanging open, and is about to mount her horse when Lincoln comes up beside her.

“Clarke.” His voice is low in her ear and when she turns to face him, his eyes are solemn, serious. “Come with me for a second?”

Obediently, she follows him into the trees, until they’re out of sight and earshot of everyone else.

“What is it?” she asks.

“The news about Bellamy wasn’t the only thing I heard. There was something else, about—” He closes his eyes, takes a breath, and she feels something cold and slimy uncoil in her stomach, slither up through her ribcage, coil around her heart and squeeze.

“Tell me.”

Eyes still closed, words rushed and quiet, he does.

The snake around her heart releases her, and she feels like she is falling.


	2. Before: king of a broken land (pt 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Miller, a knight who had graduated with him five years before and now a lieutenant and one of his best friends, sticks his head around the door. His mouth is quirked in a smile that instantly makes Bellamy wary.
> 
> “You have visitors,” he announces.
> 
> Bellamy groans. The last thing he wants to deal with right now is visitors; most were families of murdered nightbloods, looking for answers he didn’t have; some were looking for advice on problems he didn’t care about; still others came to him with suggestions and criticisms on what he should be doing to better protect his people.
> 
> “Tell them to wait in the audience chamber. I’ll deal with them in a couple of hours, or maybe in the morning.”
> 
> “Oh, I don’t think you’ll want to keep these visitors waiting,” Miller says. His eyes are positively snapping with mirth now.
> 
> “Who is it?” Bellamy demands.
> 
> “Just the Queen of Arkadia and her daughter.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally, I was going to post the entirety of "Before" as a single chapter, but it's quickly become far too much of a monster, so I'll be posting it as 4 separate parts instead. 
> 
> Massive thanks to we-survive-together and midnightbeast for betaing! (It won't let me insert hyperlinks but you can find them on tumblr.) This chapter is much improved thanks to your input.

The crown rests heavy on top of his head, eight pounds of gold encrusted with emeralds and rubies, a thousand tons of responsibility and duty. He can feel its edge digging painfully into the skin of his forehead, can already sense some of his curls getting hopelessly tangled around the prongs. He forces himself to hold still, understanding the importance and uniqueness of this moment.

He is the first ever king not descended from royal blood. The first king to usurp the previous before his death, and banish him for crimes of inhumanity performed against his people.

He is twenty-two years old, and the streets whisper his name. Those streets had been his home, once; he had been born to them, raised in the crooked maze of wooden shacks and dirt paths that smelled alternately of rotting garbage and cooking meat.

It feels like a lifetime ago. Perhaps it was; he is certainly not the same person now, freshly crowned king of Polis, than he had been back then, struggling to provide for his family and keep the truth of his sister hidden.

His sister: it could be said that she was the reason any of this happened, the underlying motivation that drove him to work his way up the ranks, from street urchin to squire to knight, to be named heir to the king after his son’s death, and the force that gave him the strength to successfully pull off the coup. She didn’t need to hide any longer. Never again.

“Bellamy Blake,” Marcus Kane, his mentor and first advisor, intones, “King of Polis, Lord of the Stars and Protector of the Earth, you may rise.”

Obediently he rises to his feet, careful to stand tall and hold his neck straight, as confident as if this was what he’d been born for. The rustle of fabric fills the hall as, in perfect synchronicity, everyone kneels and bows their heads towards him. Even Kane, even Lincoln, without whom he would not be here.

He waits the prescribed time, counting beats in his head, before saying, “Stand, all. There is no need to bow before me. I am your leader, but I am also your equal.” His voice doesn’t shake at all, and Kane sends him a sharp look at the deviation from the traditional words.

He doesn’t care. He had thought long and hard before making the change. But he had risen to this position from poverty, and had gained it through betrayal; these people were not below him.

An aisle opens up before him, carpeted in red and lined by people who were _his_ people, now, and with Monroe and Miller leading the way, he marches between them, from the coronation throne at one end of the hall and through the great oak double doors at the other end.

That had been the first day of his rule. Today was day three hundred and eighty-one, just over one year since he first took the weight of the world upon his shoulders. If anything, it’s only grown heavier.

It was not that he’d expected being king to be easy, not precisely; but he had been certain, when overthrowing Jaha and taking the crown for himself, that it could only get better.

And he supposed, objectively speaking, that things _had_ gotten better. There was no longer an all-out war on people like his sister, people who had black blood instead of red. Of course, there were still plenty who believed that black blood was the devil’s mark and needed to be eradicated; people were still dying. His sister was safe in the palace with him but there were others like her that were found on street corners or in alleyways with slit throats or holes in their chests, black-stained clothing a clear indicator of why they’d been killed.

Sometimes, the perpetrators were caught, and thrown in jail or hanged depending on the severity of their crime, but no matter how many of them he took off the street there were still nightbloods turning up dead on almost a weekly basis.

He had been a naïve fool to think the war would end with his rise to power. Of course, there would still be people who believed what Jaha had been preaching. Of course, there were people who would not stop until all of the nightbloods were dead.

Kane cautions him constantly with patience. “The world never changes in a day,” he’s said, over and over again. “We must persevere. Keep our strength. Things will get better. We must remain faithful.”

Some days, Kane’s words fortify him. On others, they only cause him to growl with frustration and stalk from the room.

The thing is, he’s not a patient person. Never has been; he’s always been prone to rash decisions, action first, thought later. So now, when he’s been king for over a year and he’s forced to read yet another report on a nightblood who turned up dead overnight, and there’s nothing he can _do_ about it, he can’t help but grind his teeth together and snarl at anyone who dares come too close to him.

Now, he’s successfully locked himself in his study after yelling at first Lincoln and then at Octavia, and doesn’t expect anyone to bother him for at least a couple of hours. His rages are well understood around the palace, and most know that the only way to get through to him is to let him cool off on his own. So the knock that sounds rapidly at his door comes as something of a surprise, and he hesitates briefly before calling, “Come in.”

Miller, a knight who had graduated with him five years before and now a lieutenant and one of his best friends, sticks his head around the door. His mouth is quirked in a smile that instantly makes Bellamy wary.

“You have visitors,” he announces.

Bellamy groans. The last thing he wants to deal with right now is visitors; most were families of murdered nightbloods, looking for answers he didn’t have; some were looking for advice on problems he didn’t care about; still others came to him with suggestions and criticisms on what he should be doing to better protect his people.

“Tell them to wait in the audience chamber. I’ll deal with them in a couple of hours, or maybe in the morning.”

“Oh, I don’t think you’ll want to keep these visitors waiting,” Miller says. His eyes are positively snapping with mirth now.

“Who is it?” Bellamy demands.

“Just the Queen of Arkadia and her daughter.”

That makes Bellamy sit up straight in his chair. Arkadia and Polis had been close allies under the previous king, but he hadn’t received any communication from their queen since taking power. He had assumed that her friendship with Jaha had meant that she supported his ideas, and perhaps it still did; why, then, was she here? And why bring her daughter?

“In that case,” he says with a sigh, “tell them to wait in the red room. I’ll be there shortly.”

Miller gives him a jaunty salute before disappearing. He returns to his apartments briefly to run a wet comb through his unruly curls and straighten the lapels of his coat in the mirror. Convinced he looks presentable, he makes his way to the red room.

The red room was so named for the carpet in gold and scarlet that scrolled across the wooden floor, the autumn tapestries of red and orange that hung upon the walls, and the four chairs with red velvet upholstery that clustered around the fireplace. It was a room for small, intimate gatherings. When he enters, three of the four chairs are already occupied.

He stops dead on the threshold. “Kane,” he says dumbly.

His advisor smiles at him and gestures for him to take a seat in the empty chair. Still surprised at Kane’s presence, he recovers his manners enough to sweep a bow first at the Queen of Arkadia and then at the princess, before sinking into the only available seat.

“To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“The pleasure is entirely ours, Your Majesty,” the queen says with a smile. Her smile, to his surprise, is warm and genuine, and causes crinkles to form at the corners of her eyes. But he thinks that to extend the pleasure to her daughter is, at best, generous; the princess sits haughty and expressionless in a gown nearly the colour of mourning grey, her cold blue eyes boring into him.

“Her Highness comes with a…proposal,” Kane interjects.

“Then let’s hear it.” The polite thing to do, he knows, is to make small talk, inquire after the family and kingdom, before getting to the real purpose of the visit. But he was not born to royalty, and he doesn’t have the patience to waste time on trite matters; those who deal with him often have become used to his brusque ways. The queen only blinks once in surprise before saying:

“I have come here to offer you my daughter’s hand in marriage.”

His turn to blink in surprise, and he just barely manages to keep his mouth from falling open. Of all the things he’d been expecting her to say, that wasn’t one of them. Foolish, perhaps, given there was little other reason she’d bring the princess with her on a visit of state.

“Why?” he manages. Again, perhaps foolish of him to be surprised; he’s twenty-three years old, and he’s heard plenty of whispers around the palace about his unmarried status and lack of heirs. But he had been expecting something different; surely he deserved to have a choice.

The queen’s eyes flicker over to Kane and, outraged, he turns his attention to him as well. “You’ve discussed this with her!” he accuses. “Behind my back. Like I’m a small child incapable of making decisions for myself. Be careful not to overstep yourself, Kane. You may be my advisor, but I am your king.”

There’s a ringing finality in his voice, and Kane bows his head contritely. “Forgive me, Highness. Perhaps I overstepped my boundaries, but Queen Abigail made some very compelling arguments when requesting an audience with you. I suggest you hear her out.”

Involuntarily his jaw clenches, and he has to forcibly relax. Knowing he’s incapable of speaking without it coming out petulant, he waves a hand at the queen for her to continue.

“Your rule has not been as stable as you’d like,” she begins. Seeing him bristle, she hurriedly adds, “Through no fault of your own, of course. But the minds of the masses are hard to change, and I’ve heard of your difficulty in maintaining the new laws put in place to protect nightbloods. We can help you with that.”

“How?”

The queen gestures to her daughter. “Because Clarke is also a nightblood.” The princess only glares, defiant.

His head spins, taking in the implications of this; with difficulty, he focuses his thoughts into a single point and says, “With all due respect, Highness, how will marrying a nightblood reduce the opinion towards them in the city, instead of turning more of my people against me?”

“By proving them wrong.” Her eyes, a lighter shade of brown then his, are full of intensity. “Nightbloods have never before held a position of prestige. Even your sister, who you worked so hard to protect—” He takes in a sharp breath; how did she know about Octavia? “—is nothing more than a scribe’s apprentice, and still isn’t free to walk the city alone. But to have a queen who is a nightblood—that would show that there is nothing inherently _wrong_ with having black blood, that it doesn’t make you devil’s spawn or doomed to a life of begging. Clarke can help change the public’s perception of nightblood—she’s loved by the people back home, and she’ll be loved by them here. She’s a natural born leader; people listen to her.”

“They do?” He raises an eyebrow. The princess’s face is so cold he can practically feel winter emanating off of her, her eyes like chips of ice, her arms folded across her chest in an unwelcoming way. Her glare at him deepens, if possible. He can’t imagine anyone’s people _loving_ her, _wanting_ to listen to her.

The queen glances at her daughter, her lips twitching with a small smile. “Once they get to know her,” she amends.

For a moment he sits in silence, mulling over her reasoning. It _could_ work, but he could also see several ways in which it could go wrong; after all, he was a king with a nightblood sister, and that had done little to change public opinion. But then again, as the queen had pointed out, Octavia was only a scribe’s apprentice, not often under the public’s eye. A queen, on the other hand…

He realizes, far too belatedly, what it is he’s already done: usurped a king for the crimes he’d committed against nightbloods and then changed the laws, halfheartedly tried to impose them; meanwhile his sister, a notable nightblood, was still hidden from view and all other nightbloods were left to live on the streets, unnamed and cared for only in theory.

What kind of king was he, to not back up his laws with action? To not show his people, irrevocably, that nightbloods were not beneath them?

“What about you?” he demands. “What do you get out of this deal?”

“There used to be a strong alliance between our two nations,” the queen says, and he bites his tongue before he can say something like, _and the man you had built that alliance with was a monster_. “I’d like to see us be strong, together, again.” She sighs, before admitting, “Arkadia is a small nation. Having Polis as an ally is no small accomplishment, and garners respect in international circles. Trade agreements are more easily settled upon, borders less likely to be attacked. And any children of yours will be heir to both kingdoms, which is the greatest thing I could accomplish.”

“And what does _she_ think of this little arrangement?” he asks, jerking his head at the princess.

“ _She_ can speak for herself,” the princess breaks in sharply. First time he’s heard her voice, and it crashes across him like a whip. “And while _she_ doesn’t appreciate being traded about like cattle, _she_ is willing to do whatever is best for her country.” Her blue eyes challenge him: _Are you?_

He nods once to himself. “Your offer is tempting,” he says. “I will require a couple of days to consider it.”

“You can have three,” the queen tells him. “After that, I must return to my own kingdom.”

He nods again, this time in agreement. “Three days, then. You will have my answer.” They both stand and he shakes her hand firmly, before bringing her hand up to his lips and kissing it gently.

“King Bellamy,” the Queen of Arkadia says as he’s turning to go, “may I say that meeting you truly has been a pleasure? You are…not quite what I’d expected.”

He smiles tightly at her. “Likewise,” he says. And then, to Kane, “Show them to their rooms and make sure they’re comfortable. After that, please come see me in my study.”

Half an hour later, there is a knock at his door before it opens and Kane lets himself in. From the almost sheepish expression on his face, Bellamy guesses that he knows why he was called here.

“How long exactly,” he says without preamble as soon as Kane is seated, “have you been in correspondence with the Queen of Arkadia?”

“Years,” Kane responds immediately. “Shortly after you obtained knighthood and we moved to the palace. We struck up a…friendship…on one of her visits to Polis, and have stayed in contact ever since. Mostly,” he corrects himself. “We didn’t hear from each other for several months before Jaha’s removal, and she didn’t speak to me for several months after, but she sent me a message about six months ago and we’ve been communicating since.”

“And what kind of things do you tell her?”

“I’ve kept her up to date on the nightblood situation,” Kane says. “That was mostly the information she wanted before, to know if she could ever risk bringing Clarke here. And I told her about you—she was very curious about the boy who had been chosen as heir after Wells’ unfortunate death.”

“What did you tell her about me?”

There must be a dangerous look in his eye, because Kane’s voice is less calm when he speaks, more rushed. “Only that your sister was a nightblood, and you wanted nothing more than to have them be accepted back into society. That you were growing into your role as king remarkably well, for someone who wasn’t raised in court. I told her how proud I was of you.”

Bellamy scoffs at this not-so-subtle compliment, but it has the desired effect: he feels himself softening. “I’d appreciate it, Marcus,” he says, “if you could at least keep me privy to some of your outside communications. I don’t need to know all the details, but I’d prefer not to have a marriage proposal sprung on me again.”

“Of course, sir,” Kane says, ducking his head. He begins to rise, but Bellamy stops him with a gesture.

“Before you go,” he says, “what can you tell me about the princess?”

◊◊◊

To be perfectly honest with himself, he’d already decided upon his answer to the queen’s proposal before he’d left his meeting with her. The challenging look in the princess’s eyes, her words— _willing to do whatever is best for her country_ —had left him with little choice.

So instead of spending the three days making up his mind, he spends them trying to learn as much as he can about the princess who was to be his wife.

It’s not an easy task. The princess seems to be avoiding him: when he sees her in the halls, she quickly vanishes in the other direction; when he stumbles upon her in the library, she quickly packs up her books and leaves. Even when he sits down beside her at dinner, a position she can’t leave and maintain any pretence at politeness, she refuses to show any interest in him, answering his questions in monosyllables and never lifting her gaze from her plate.

After dinner on the third night, the night before her mother is to leave and he is to give his answer, he follows her up to her room. She ignores him thoroughly as he follows her through the halls, acknowledging his presence only when he sticks his foot in the door to prevent it from slamming in his face.

Then she whirls to face him, eyes snapping with anger. “It is not a very kingly thing to do,” she grinds out, “to follow a woman to her bedroom when she hasn’t invited you there and attempt to force your way inside.”

It’s the most words she’s ever spoken to him, and he finds himself reacting to her anger with his own.

“I wouldn’t have to follow you,” he says—attempts to keep his voice calm but knows it comes out close to a shout—“if you would just talk to me! Tomorrow I am going to tell your mother that I’ll marry you, and it’s what has to be done, for both of us, but we could at least try to be civil about it. At least _try_ to get along.”

“I have no desire to get along with you,” she snaps. “You killed my best friend and usurped the rightful king, and I will marry you if that’s what must be done, but I will _not_ be civil about it.”

He’s so shocked that when she attempts again to slam the door in his face he lets her, and he’s left staring at the carved pattern of branches in the wood.

Regretfully, her actions towards him change nothing: the next morning, he invites Queen Abigail for tea in his private sitting room, and tells her that he would be happy to marry her daughter and unify their kingdoms—with one condition.

“The wedding itself will be set at a time dictated by me,” he says. “I wish the opportunity to legitimately win over your daughter’s heart, Majesty.”

The queen smiles. “Done. But regardless of whether she loves you or not, in a year’s time you will be wed. Politics don’t often care about emotions.”

He bows his head to her in acquiescence and, several hours later, watches her off from outside the front gates of his palace. The princess stands several feet away him, dressed in a gown the colour of storm clouds, and when the queen has disappeared over a rise she turns and stalks back inside, never paying the slightest bit of attention to him.

◊◊◊

He stops trying to make her talk to him. Doesn’t try to catch her attention, doesn’t sit next to her at meals, walks straight past her in the halls. There are other things for him to be doing, in any case, than attempting to woo his bride-to-be: complaints to hear, cases to judge, hangings to be present at, reports to read, policies to sign off on, spending to be approved.

Of course, that doesn’t mean he still isn’t trying to learn what he can; the princess spends a lot of her free time in the library where Octavia works, helping transcribe crumbling manuscripts onto new parchment.

“What does she spend all her time in there _doing_?” he asks his sister one evening, when they’re having dinner together in his apartments.

She shrugs, spears a piece of pork onto her fork and deposits it into her mouth, chewing and swallowing before replying. “Spends a lot of time reading. Histories and medical texts, mostly. And she draws a lot. Never says anything, though.”

“Have you talked to her?”

“She doesn’t exactly seem open to conversation.”

“Can you try?”

Octavia rolls her eyes. “I’m not going to hit on the girl _for_ you, Bell. Even as king, there’s some things you have to do yourself.” This is what he loves so much about talking to his sister: the nicknames, the teasing banter—she’s the only one comfortable enough around him, anymore, to talk to him like he’s a person instead of the ruler of their land.

“I would, but she won’t talk to me.”

“Already got off on the wrong foot with her?” Octavia raises an eyebrow. “How’d you pull that one off, big brother?”

“I didn’t do anything,” he snaps irritably. “Somehow, she’s under the impression that I murdered Wells.”

“Then tell her you didn’t.” Octavia suggests it like it’s the easiest thing in the world.

“I _would_ ,” he repeats, “but she won’t talk to me. That’s what I need you for. Sit down with her, talk to her, warm her up to the idea of me. That way, next time I open my mouth around her, she doesn’t attempt to snap my head off.”

“So you want me to talk to her…about you,” Octavia says dryly. “Make you sound like someone who’s not a complete prick. Harder than you’d think, Bell.”

He swipes playfully at her, and she ducks out of the way with a laugh. “But I’ll do it,” she says solemnly. “Because you’re my brother and I love you.”

“Thanks, O,” he says, relieved. “I owe you one.”

Every day, Octavia comes to his study before dinner with an update on the day’s conversation with the princess. At first, she doesn’t have much to tell: “She said hello to me, but that was it, and looked at me oddly when I didn’t leave”; “I asked her what she was drawing and she said it was a girl she had known back home”; “She’s always wanted to be a healer, that’s why she reads the old medical books.”

“What about me?” he asks, exasperated, well aware that he sounds self-centred and childish. “What have you told her about me?”

Octavia rolls her eyes at him in the way that tells him she can’t believe that he’s the elder sibling by six years. “I said that with you as king, we’re the closest we’ve been to peace in generations. But I don’t think she believed me. Told her that you were the most promising knight in your class, in both combat and lecture, and that Kane sometimes says you’re the best student he’s ever had.” (Even that second-hand compliment from his mentor makes him glow with pride.) “Said that before you’d become king I’d spent my entire life in hiding, but now I had learned how to read and write and had the whole palace to explore.”

Gradually, she learns more about the princess and shares this information with him: “Her father was executed for treason last year. She still hasn’t forgiven her mother for that”; “she’ll do whatever she has to for her people, even if it means giving up her own life, and she made it sound like marrying you was just as bad”; “she’s never been so far from home before.”

After a week of this, Octavia tells him, “That’s enough. If I haven’t warmed her up to you by now, it’s never going to happen. Go talk to you herself.”

Reluctantly, he admits that she’s right and makes his way to the library in the quiet hours of the afternoon, when she’s guaranteed to be there.

She’s sitting by a table near one of the high windows, and spring sunlight streaming in turns her hair to gold, a halo floating about her face. She’s dressed once again in mourning, charcoal grey; he suspects she’s trying to make a point. Her brow is drawn in concentration, her hand moving a stick of charcoal in neat, quick lines across a piece of parchment. His breath catches in his throat, and for the first time he admits to himself that she’s beautiful.

He crosses the thick carpet to stand near her and awkwardly clears his throat. She looks up at him and for a fraction of a second there is something soft and distant in her face, before her expression closes off and she glares at him coldly.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m the king and this is my palace,” he says testily. “I’m allowed to go wherever I choose.”

She sniffs, begins rolling up her parchment. “Fine. I’ll go somewhere else, then.”

“No. Wait, please.” He places a hand on her arm to stop her without thinking, and hastily removes it when her eyes flash. “Can I talk to you for just a minute?”

For a moment she doesn’t move, and then she slowly sinks back into her seat. Her posture is stiff, her back held straight, and she doesn’t meet his eyes. “Fine.”

He sits down across from her, hands interlaced on the table in front of him, one foot tapping nervously. There’s only one way to begin: “I didn’t kill Wells.”

Her eyes close and she takes a deep, slow breath. “I don’t want to talk about that right now.” Her voice is low, dangerous, but he pushes on anyway.

“We are _going_ to talk about it right now, because I’m not leaving until you know the truth.” No indication from her on whether she’s willing to listen but she hasn’t tried getting up to leave again, so he supposes that’s a good sign.

“Wells was killed by a street girl who recognized him as the king’s son and wanted to get revenge for her father, who had been executed the year before. It was a fluke: she never should have gotten through his guards. Maybe it was because she was so small; she snuck through their legs and then before anyone could stop her, had stabbed Wells in the neck with a rusty knife. They tried to stop the bleeding, but it was too late. He died before real help could arrive.”

He hadn’t been there but he remembered sparring on the training grounds when the news had come, remembered hearing the howls of the grieving king echoing through the palace’s halls for days afterwards.

“I was at the funeral. Half of the city came. We wrapped him in a white shroud and placed him on a boat, surrounded him with candles and sent him out to sea. The girl was too young to be executed for her crime, so they tried to take her into custody, but before they could, she—” He swallows hard. “She killed herself.”

The princess is looking at him, her expression consoling, sorrowful, disbelieving; then all at once her guard comes crashing down again and she says coldly, “And you just _happened_ to become heir to the king, two years before you removed him from his throne, banished him from his land? How am I supposed to believe that? That it was all just some _coincidence_? Let me guess—King Thelonius chose to step down of his own accord, chose to banish himself, and you _just happened_ to ascend the throne in his place.”

“King Thelonius wanted to exterminate all the nightbloods,” he snarls. “He started a war against them. In the year before I became king, nearly one thousand nightbloods were killed. Murdered. And I don’t understand how you—a _nightblood_ —could stand for him—”

“I don’t believe you,” she says, but her face has gone white. “He can’t have wanted that. He was friends with my mother—he _knew_ me—and Wells, he never would have let him—”

“Listen, _Princess_.” The words are sharp-edged and acidic; he bites them off and spits them at her. A white-hot rage is building up behind his chest, behind his eyes, and he clenches his hands into fists to stop it from exploding. “There are some things you don’t understand. You were born on a pedestal, high above the rest of us, and just because you come to believe the world is a certain way, doesn’t mean it is. Let me tell you how things really are: I was born on the streets to a poor family; no father, a struggling mother, a sister whose existence we tried to keep secret because if the king found out she was nightblood, she would die. I’ve gone to bed hungry more times than I can count, I’ve begged in the streets, I’ve had people like _you_ laugh down at me like I was some exhibit and not a real person.

“My mother had a…relationship with one of the knights, and managed to procure us some more food. When I was sixteen, she used that relationship to get me admitted to the court. First I was a squire to a cruel old lord whose only use for me was as another one of his servants; when he died I was given to a lady who spoke of nothing but how nightbloods were a stain upon the land and expected me to do the same. I lied about who I was and what I believed, and when I became a knight in the king’s court, I continued to lie and deceive. I’ve done terrible things in the name of eventual peace, Princess, betrayed my honour to build myself up in the king’s esteem, and I did not kill Wells but when he died, the king named me as his heir.

“If I did a traitorous thing in usurping the king, it was because it was the right thing to do. I rose from nothing to be here, Princess. I fought for years. And I did it all for my sister, so she could be free. So don’t you _dare_ tell me that I was wrong, that I’m a murderer, that Jaha was the rightful king. And if that’s what you truly believe then I will call this alliance off because so help me, I will not be married to someone who thinks _he_ was right.”

He stands up from the table so quickly that his chair falls over and crashes into the floor with a muffled thud. He doesn’t spare a glance for it, doesn’t spare a glance for _her_ , as he turns and stalks out of the library.

Looking back, he supposes their first conversation could have gone better.

◊◊◊

The princess seeks him out a couple of days later. The knock comes timidly at his study door, and when he huffs out “Come in,” she’s the last person he’s expecting to see.

She hovers on the threshold, hesitant about going any farther. _She’s afraid of me_ , he realizes, and the twinge of guilt is accompanied by one of satisfaction.

“I’m sorry,” she says, when several beats have passed in silence. Her voice is soft, uncertain, the first time he’s heard it as anything but cold and unwelcoming. “You were right. I shouldn’t have judged you on what I thought I knew. It was easier to blame you for everything than to accept that people I had known my whole life were in the wrong, that I had been lied to.”

She gives him a small, apologetic smile, and he’s about to return it when she ruins _everything_ by saying, “Octavia showed me the old newspapers and reports. I read up on everything. I believe you.”

“But you didn’t before,” he says flatly. His temper is rising, blood boiling beneath his skin, and he struggles to keep his voice even. “Look, _Princess,_ if this is going to work, you’re going to have to trust me. Take me at my word. Trust that I’m only trying to do what’s best for my people, and that’s what I’ve _always_ been trying to do.”

“If this is going to work,” she shoots back at him, “you’re going to need to treat me like I’m a real person. I’m not just a princess. I have a name and I’d appreciate if you used it.”

“If you’re more than just a princess,” he snaps, “then prove it to me and stop acting like a spoiled, self-entitled brat.”

Her eyes flash and her mouth opens, closes; without saying anything, she spins on her heel and the door slams shut behind her.

The next person to come see him is Octavia, several hours later. She barges into his study without knocking, her eyes full of sparks, her lips drawn in a tight line. He sighs and puts down the report he was reading, wondering how he’s ever going to accomplish anything as king with all these interruptions.

“You called her a self-entitled brat?” she explodes. “Gods above, Bellamy, _why_?”

“Because she is one,” he says calmly. “She’s been a princess her whole life, had hardly ever left that castle of hers. She knows nothing about living in poverty, about living under an oppressive ruler, about fighting every day just to survive. And yet she has the audacity to come here and question the means by which I came to power, the way I run things, as if _she_ could do any better.”

“She apologized for that!”

“Only _after_ she did some reading and realized that I was telling the truth. She didn’t trust me that I wasn’t making it all up.”

“Why should she?” Octavia throws up her hands in exasperation. “Bellamy, she doesn’t _know_ you. You were telling her things that challenged what she believed had been the truth for years, things that had been told to her by people she loved. Why should she trust you over her best friend? Her mother? Her best friend’s father? Because _you,_ Bellamy, are self-righteous and good and anyone who doesn’t immediately see that is spoiled and self-entitled?”

She stands with her hands on her hips, glaring at him.

“Oh,” he says, very quietly, when her words sink in.

Octavia pulls out a chair and sits across from him, leaning towards him intently. “Listen, Bell, I realize that the two of you hardly got off on the right foot. But you’ve already committed to marrying her, and the least you can do is at least try to get to know her. Besides, she’s not a bad person: she’s smart as hell, dedicated, and cares at least as much about her people as you do about yours. If you two would stop treating the other like they were made of broken glass and thorns, I think you might actually get along.”

“You’re right,” he sighs, and his sister grins triumphantly. He glances out the window, where long fingers of shadow are reaching across the land. There are still several hours until sunset; it would be time enough. Turning back to his sister, he asks, “Would you ask the princess if she’ll join me in my apartments for dinner tonight?”

There’s a look in his sister’s eyes that says, _Ask her yourself_ , and he responds with a look that says simply, _Please?_

Octavia pushes her chair away and stands with a sigh. “You owe me one, big brother,” she says. “ _Again_.”

He grins at her. “I know,” he assures her. “Trust me, I won’t forget.”

He abandons the rest of his day’s work in favour of returning to his apartments to tidy them, make sure the table is set just the way he’d like it and that the candles haven’t burned too low. Then he spends far too much time standing in front of the mirror and holding up coats, trying to find one that gives the best impression. He settles on one of pale cream silk, gold at the cuffs and scrolling up the sleeves.

Vainly, he tries to tame the mop of curls on his head; it’s hopeless. He scrubs at his hands, but the ink stain on his thumb refuses to come off. He tugs at his coat, straightening it, adjusting it, brushing non-existent lint from the shoulders. Irritably, he sends all his retainers from the room and paces back and forth, treading a path from the window to the door and back again.

Octavia sends him a message to let him know that the princess accepted his offer and will arrive just after sundown; sure enough, the last glow of the sun has only just faded from the windows when a knock comes at the door.

She stands bathed in the golden lamplight from the hall, and for a moment he can only stare, because she’s _beautiful._ Her gown is pale green, a pattern of leaves worked in silver across the bodice, which cuts low across her chest (he stops himself from looking, barely). The dress clings tightly to her torso and flares out at her waist; her sleeves cling to her upper arms before flowing loosely from her elbows. Her hair is in an elaborate braid atop her head and her eyes are not cold, not icy, not stormy, but _soft._

He swallows hard before stepping to the side and sweeping her a low bow, a gesture of his arm inviting her in. Without a word, she enters, staring in awe about the room.

Clearing his throat, he speaks first: “Thank you for coming.”

She nods absently, still staring about the room, and he tries to see it as she does: there is a fireplace, marble lions reaching up to hold the mantle; a rug that is midnight blue and thick beneath their feet; carved ornamentations about the window, which itself is fitted with stained glass. The room is lit by numerous candles, on the hearth, mounted on the walls, on the table between the two plates, and the effect is a soft, glowing, ethereal light.

Not wanting to stare too overtly at her, at the expression of wonder on her face that makes her seem years younger, he takes a seat at the table and fiddles with a napkin.

“I wanted to apologize,” he says formally, “for how I treated you earlier. You are undeserving of such comments.”

She sits down across from him and smiles slyly, and suddenly he’s painfully aware of the thumping of his heart in his chest. “Octavia spoke to you, didn’t she?”

He nods, looking down at his lap briefly before meeting her smile with a similar one of his own. “She made some good points,” he says. “Primarily about how you should have no reason to trust me, especially after knowing me hardly a week. And that it was childish of me to be reduced to calling you names. And that if we’re going to marry each other, we should at least make the attempt to get to know each other. What do you say?”

Her smile widens. “I think your sister is pretty smart,” she says. “And it was kind of her to spend so much time trying to make us see reason.”

“I definitely owe her one…or two. Helps that she spends so much of her time in that damn library.”

“Only because she’s in love with the scribe,” the princess says offhandedly, and his mouth falls open.

“With _Lincoln?_ ” Suddenly his baby sister’s motivations for becoming a scribe and spending hours locked in the dusty library transcribing old documents becomes clear, and he groans at the fact that he’d never seen it before.

The princess laughs at him. “Please don’t tell her I told you,” she says. “Judging from your expression, I’m guessing you didn’t know.”

He can only shake his head dumbly, and roughly pushes thoughts of his sister and Lincoln—one of his closest friends and staunchest supporters, damn him—out of his mind. “I won’t tell if you promise to forget all the terrible things I said to you earlier, and let us start over.”

“Deal.”

He takes a deep breath, pushes the image of her from before, cold and hard and distant, from his mind and replaces it with the way she is now, soft and smiling and dreamlike. His voice comes out lower and rougher than he’d intended when he says, “My name is Bellamy Blake. Please only call me “King” or “Highness” when there are people around; in private, just Bellamy is fine.”

“My name is Clarke Griffin,” she says seriously. “Please don’t ever call me Princess.”

_Alright, Princess,_ he almost says, but stops himself. Now is not the time to antagonize her, not when they finally seem to be making progress. “Alright, Clarke,” he says instead, and is rewarded with a brilliant smile.

They eat after that, and there is a lot of food to get through: roasted potatoes, cobbed corn, freshly baked buns, tender pork smothered in a mushroom sauce, and endless amounts of wine; when the main course is cleared away it’s replaced with a rhubarb pie.

The conversation between them flows easier once they’ve each had a glass or two of wine, and he asks her harmless questions about herself, questions that don’t delve too deeply into her past: just what her favourite time of year was, and what her hobbies were, and where she liked to go when she needed to be alone.

Spring, she says, a far off look in her eye, when the last snow has melted and the greens are so bright they hurt to look at, when the air smells fresh and the warmth of the sun feels like hope.

I like to draw, she says, and go for long rides on my horse; sometimes I take my lunch and a sketchpad and stop somewhere and try to capture it on the page, and only return home when the sun is setting.

There’s this tower in the castle, she says, that can only be reached through a ladder and a trapdoor in a disused storeroom; I like to go up there because I know no one will ever interrupt me, and just look out over the land with the wind in my face. It reminds me to breathe.

What about you?

I like winter, he says, when the air is crisp and cold in the morning and it’s hard getting out of bed; when all the fireplaces are constantly lit, and the wine is always mulled, and everyone gathers together in the dining hall for meals because there’s more warmth when we’re together.

I like sparring, he says, because it takes my mind off my other duties. I like reading about history and learning it, so I don’t repeat the same mistakes.

There’s this place in the garden, he says, by the waterfall and hidden by ferns, and when I go there it feels like the rest of the world has stopped existing. I can take you there one day, if you’d like.

She nods at him, shyly, and he feels a warmth spread throughout his chest that can’t be attributed solely to the wine.

When at last they decide to call it a night, and he offers to walk her back to her rooms, her face is flushed a pretty pink and his head is buzzing pleasantly. They stop outside her door, and momentarily he’s at a loss for words; all he can think about in that moment is how pretty she looks under the lamplight, with flushed cheeks and curls of her hair escaping the tight braid, and how much he wants to kiss her.

A part of him that is still sober tells him that it’s not a good idea, that they’ve only just started to build their relationship and that to rush it too quickly would be to risk ruining it, and reluctantly he listens. Instead, takes his hand in hers and kisses the back of it. A giggle escapes her before she claps her other hand over her mouth.

“I’m sorry,” she says through her fingers. “I should—I should go.”

She turns and opens the door, but before she can step inside he calls, “Wait. Would you—would you like to join me again for dinner tomorrow?”

She nods quickly before vanishing into her room, door closing behind her.

◊◊◊

The next night, they talk about happier moments from their childhood: she tells him how Wells would often be sent to Arkadia for the winter and they would spend hours searching for secret passages in the castle.

“Did you ever find any?” he asks.

“We thought we did, once, behind an old shelf in the library. Wells got stuck trying to figure out where it led; it took the combined efforts of four people to get him out.”

He tells her about how he and Octavia would sneak out at night sometimes, because she was desperate to see the things he was always telling her about; once they had gotten lost in the maze of shanties by the river, returning home to a furious and frantic mother when the sun was already rising in the sky.

“She made us promise not to do it again,” he says, “but I took her out anyway. I couldn’t deny her that piece of freedom.”

On the third night he tells her how he had broken his arm once, falling off a roof, and she tells him how she’d broken her ribs and punctured a lung tumbling from her horse into a ravine. On the fifth night she tells him how she’d gotten angry at the head cook once, and had switched the salt for the sugar as revenge (she tells the story with a laugh, admitting that yes, once she had been a spoiled, self-entitled princess). He tells her of the time he managed to steal half a cured ham but had been so hungry that he’d hidden himself in an abandoned cellar and eaten the entire thing, returning home empty-handed.

On the tenth night he tells her how he had gone years without seeing his mother or his sister while training as a squire and how his tutor, Kane, had become like a father to him, someone who had taught him everything from court-speak to fighting; she tells him of the things she had been forced to learn as princess, and how she had always been better at sewing up flesh than clothing.

On the eighteenth night she tells him, “About a year and a half ago, my mother found out my father was in correspondence with the queen of Azgeda. There is nothing treasonous about speaking with the leader of another nation, of course, but the content of the letters itself—” She takes a deep breath and a gulp of wine. “He had been divulging state secrets. In the interest of honesty and partnership, he said, to build bridges and avoid future war. I believed him, believed he was only doing what he thought was best, but the law is unbending and my mother had no choice. She—”

Her voice chokes off, tears flooding her eyes, and he’s desperate to say something that will make her feel better, but no words come. He too knows the pain of losing a parent, and there are no words that can ease it. To take her mind off of it, or maybe to show that he’s thankful that she opened up to him about the worst part of her past, he tells her of some of the crimes he had committed at the king’s orders, the things he had done in his desperate bid to keep his sister safe.

“During the worst part of his reign,” he says, “Jaha had been offering a reward for people who came forward with the names of nightbloods, and gave punishment to those who protected them. He would send out the knights in groups he called “hunting parties” and we would round up nightbloods and—and _kill_ them, out on the street. I told you that nearly a thousand nightbloods were killed in the year before I became king, but I didn’t tell you that _I_ had done that, taken part in the slaughter of people I’m sworn to protect—”

Clarke is staring at him like he’s a stranger and he drops his eyes from hers in shame, takes a deep, shuddering breath.

“My mother taught me to be good,” he says, voice breaking, “but how many times can you do bad things before you have to accept that that’s who you are?”

She’s quiet for a moment, seeming to search for words. “You _are_ good, Bellamy,” she says at last. “I see that in you. You’ve always done what you need to keep your sister alive. _That’s_ who you are. The things you’ve done to get here, they don’t define you.”

He nods, still unable to meet her gaze, blinks back tears but not before one tracks down his cheek.

“I mean it,” she says, placing a hand over his. “You did what you had to do, what your king ordered you to do. Jaha may have been evil, but you are not.”

He can’t help a small smile, because three weeks before she’d been saying the opposite; he raises his eyes to hers and she nods at him encouragingly. And a part of him is desperate to believe her; he doesn’t, not yet, but he thinks that maybe one day he will.

Things are different between them after that, in a good way; they have given each other the darkest, grieving parts of themselves and in doing so had forged a connection that bonded them together. He felt lighter for having told her the things that had been bearing down on his heart—things he hadn’t told even Octavia, for fear of what she would say—and lighter still knowing that she had accepted them, had accepted _him_ and all his flaws.

Some nights he’s expected to make a public appearance in the dining hall, and even then she sits beside him at the long table, their knees and shoulders brushing. Most afternoons she joins him in his study, eager to learn and eager to contribute. She’s full of ideas, from what they should plant next in the garden to how they should get rid of the surplus of preserved berries found in one of the pantries, from implementing a tax on the upper class to bring in more revenue to having a free public feast at solstices and equinoxes in the interest of unifying the city.

She’s clever and cunning, with a mischievous streak and a vision for the world that outreached even his own. She has a burning desire to heal people, to fix things, a determination that will not be quelled regardless of the seeming impossibility of the task at hand.

He knows that she’ll make a very good queen for his kingdom: even after knowing each other hardly a month they work seamlessly together, and she is often quick to point out flaws in his own plans while he’s good at working out the finer points of hers. He admits that she’ll make a good queen for him; his heart does a stutter-step whenever she enters the room, his train of thought is often derailed when he’s looking into her eyes, and her face is the last thing he sees before drifting off into sleep.

On the twenty-eighth night when she comes to his room for dinner, he takes her by the arm and leads her back into the hallway. It’s a warm spring evening, warm enough to serve as a reminder that summer is inevitably around the corner and more than warm enough to have a meal outside.

“Where are you taking me?” Clarke demands impatiently as he leads her through the halls, but he can tell from her voice that she’s excited at the prospect of a surprise, so he merely smiles and stays silent.

He takes her into the garden, which is gently illuminated by lanterns strung from the trees, along a path that winds through flower beds and an apple orchard. She gasps in delight when she realizes where he’s taking her.

There’s the hum of insects in the trees, the occasional hoot from their resident owl, the crunch of their footsteps on the path’s stones, and the rush of a waterfall. The base of the waterfall is hidden from sight by tumbled boulders and leafy ferns that are taller than him; he pushes some of the fronds away to give her a path into his quiet place.

“Bellamy…” she murmurs when she sees where he’s led her. Her voice is hushed, awed, and he comes to stand beside her, his shoulder brushing hers.

“I told you I would bring you here one day,” he says.

“It’s beautiful.”

Lanterns are clinging to the rock face and interwoven with the ferns, cloaked in red and blue and yellow paper to cast multihued light around the space. In the centre of the small clearing is a white wrought-iron table and two chairs with thick cushions. The table is already set with silverware and delicate china, and to the side is a trolley that holds their dinner in covered trays.

While she’s looking at the space he’s created for them, he’s looking at her: at the way the lanterns reflect like rivers of fire in her golden hair, the way her blue dress looks almost purple in the light, the curve of her lips as they spread into the most incredulous smile. Ridiculously, for a moment he feels like he can’t breathe.

She turns to face him, smile brighter than the glow of the lanterns, and he scrambles to pull together his thoughts, giving her a playful bow. “Care to join me for dinner, my lady?”

“I’d be delighted,” she says formally, smile still tugging at the corner of her lips, and he pulls out her chair for her.

There are no servants or retainers with them tonight so he serves them himself, piling their plates with roasted vegetables, beef soaked with gravy, fluffy potatoes flavoured liberally with garlic, and pours them each a generous cup of wine.

Conversation flows easily between them, as it has since they’d first looked past each other’s titles and seen the person underneath. There’s so much about her he wishes to know, so much that makes her curious, that they never run out of things to talk about.

As he tops up their wine glasses, he tells her the story of the first time he had tried wine for himself, when he was sixteen years old and had just been appointed Lord Fuji’s squire.

“I didn’t know what to expect,” he says, “all I’d had growing up was water or milk, or on very special occasions berry juice—I guess the colour made me think it would taste like the juice that had always been a treat, so I took a large gulp—and spit it right back out, all over my new lord’s coat.”

She laughs, throwing her head back, and he’s entranced by the sound. Three words drift unbidden in his mind, so sudden and unexpected that he nearly drops the wine flask. She doesn’t seem to notice.

“I remember when Wells and I were about thirteen or so,” she says, “and we smuggled a flask of wine from the kitchens up to my rooms. It tasted disgusting but neither of us wanted to admit it for fear of sounding childish, so we drank the entire bottle between the two of us. I’ll never forget how angry my mother had been when she found us several hours later, drunk as skunks. I’ll never forget how awful I felt the next morning, either.”

He forces a chuckle and takes a large swallow of wine to cover up his sudden discomfort. “How long was it before you could stomach the taste?” he asks absently, while his thoughts are screaming at him: why, just now, was he suddenly associating her laugh, her voice, her eyes, her candlelit skin with the word _love_?

“Years,” she says, laughing again. “I’m still unable to drink that particular variety.”

Does he love her, then? He’s not sure. The only two people in the world he had associated with that word before were his mother and his sister, and Clarke was different: he felt the overwhelming need to protect her, to keep her safe, that he felt for his sister, but with Clarke there was something else to it that he couldn’t quite explain. The way his eyes were drawn to her the moment she entered a room, the way he’d caught himself lost for minutes at a time in the play of sunlight on her hair. How the thought of her no longer being in his life made him go cold inside.

She’s speaking now, in between bites of food, of a bard who had come to the castle once when she was little, and the stories he had told of dragons in the north and their hoards of treasure, of monsters in the sea who would call sailors to them with their beautiful song, and then drown them. He listens to her with half a mind, and uses the other half to memorize her face: golden hair a wavy frame, the mole just above her upper lip, her high cheekbones and flushed cheeks, her eyes which are as dark as a twilight sky, lanterns reflecting in them like stars.

Does he love her?

Her eyes are constantly moving, flickering to his and away again. One hand holds her fork, daintily picking up food and delivering it to her mouth, while the other rests on the table, fingers drumming arrythmatically. Impulsively, he reaches out and takes her free hand in his own.

For a moment she freezes, fork halfway to her mouth, eyes locked with his, the longest she’s stayed still all night; then she relaxes, fingers curling around his, and continues on with her story.

Warmth flushes over him. He admires the way their hands look tangled together, her creamy skin contrasted against his olive-toned flesh, her lightness to his dark.

Eventually, long after their plates and cups are empty, their conversation trails to a halt, the only sound that of the insects in the trees and the water crashing against the rocks. Their hands are still interlaced on the table; her eyes meet his and don’t look away.

“What is it?” she asks, when some indeterminable time has passed.

“What?”

“You’re staring at me. Do I have gravy on my chin?”

“Oh. No.” He forces himself to look away, can’t stop his gaze from drifting back to her; she looks at him questioningly. The words tumble out of him before he’s had time to consider. “It’s just…you’re beautiful.”

A smile steals over her face, undeniably pleased. “Thanks. So are you.”

Words escape him completely, and her smile widens before she gently untangles her hands from his. “Should we get back to the palace?” she suggests. “It’s getting late.”

Yes. It was getting late. How much time has passed? The candles on the table have burned to nearly half their original height. Hours, then. The air has cooled considerably; for the first time he notices the raised flesh on Clarke’s arms. She’s probably cold. Probably wants to get to bed, warm up in her blankets and fall asleep. But he doesn’t want her to leave. Doesn’t want to say goodnight.

“Yes,” he says finally. “We probably should.”

He can’t help what happens next. They stand up from the table, step towards each other, and without consciously thinking of it, he’s pulled her into his arms.

She stiffens for a moment before relaxing, her hands coming to rest on his forearms. Her back is supple and warm beneath his hands. His thoughts are fuzzy, crashing into each other in a kaleidoscope of colours. His heart thrums like war drums to a rapid beat. His blood pounds in his ears like waves on the shore.

Her eyes are a deep blue like the tranquil sea. Her lips, perfect and pink, quirk up at him inquisitively.

She’s beautiful.

Does he love her?

He ducks his head, brushes his lips against hers, pulls back.

She stares at him. The edges of the world have gone white.

And then her hands slide from his forearms to his shoulders, and she pulls herself onto her toes so her lips can meet his.

The world is sunlight.

One of his hands slides from her back to tangle in her silken hair, just as soft as he’d imagined. Her lips are soft too, warm against his, desperate and searching and eager. Her hands curl in the lapels of his coat, pulling her closer to him. She tastes of home, of hope, of blue skies and spring rain and spiced wine.

A feeling that carries the warmth of the sun and the heat of a fire explodes in his chest and travels through his blood from his heart to his head to the tips of his toes. And in its dizzying euphoria, he finds his answer:

Yes. He loves her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 2 will be published next Friday - until then, tell me what you think so far! 
> 
> You can find me on tumblr as forgivenessishardforus.


	3. Before: king of a broken land (pt 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Realization crashes down upon him, far too late. He tears his eyes from Clarke to see the shapes that had been moving through the crowd step out into the open, dozens of them clothed in black with kerchiefs over the lower half of their faces. 
> 
> “Nightblood filth!” one of them shouts. 
> 
> “We don’t want a nightblood spawn as queen!” a voice calls out.
> 
> “Burn them all!” another cries.
> 
> Something flies through the air, glittering in the lantern light. A knife, he realizes belatedly, and can do nothing but follow it with his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope everyone enjoyed the happiness of last chapter, because it doesn't last much longer...
> 
> Thanks again to midnightbeast and we-survive-together for convincing me that this chapter is not actually terrible. (Hopefully they're right.)

Spring fades to summer. He carries the sun in his chest, a constant warmth unrivaled by the rising temperatures outside. He smiles more than he used to—he can’t help it—and people have started to notice.

Miller smirks every time he sees him. Murphy has taken to calling him “lover-boy” when he thinks he can’t hear. Kane looks like a proud father, and Octavia has an insufferable “I told you so” look on her face whenever she comes to talk to him.

He would find it irritating and embarrassing, if it weren’t for the reason he was smiling so much in the first place.

Clarke.

They spend most of their time together. It makes sense; after all, if she is to be his queen, she must be well-versed in his laws, understand the temperament of the city and how to dance around the tensions that could easily flare into violence should the wrong spark fly. So they spend hours locked in his study together ( _mostly_ getting actual work done), she sits at his side at hearings and audiences, and when he admits that he needs her to leave because he can’t focus when she’s around, she goes to the library and reads up on histories and the old laws.

Today, they sit in a biweekly council meeting, and the mood around the table is grim.

Kane and Lincoln, his two advisors, are present; as is Pike, head of training and captain of the knightguard; Miller and Murphy, each lieutenants under Pike; Octavia, because she’ll insist he tell her everything later anyway and having her there takes up less of his time; and of course Clarke, sitting beside him with one hand resting casually on his thigh, as if she’s unaware of the sparks her touch is sending shooting through his blood, making it hard to focus.

He forces himself to focus.

“Ten nightbloods dead in the last fortnight,” Pike is saying. “That’s two more than the fortnight before, three more than the one before that, and five more than the one before _that_. It’s undeniable, Your Majesty. The frequency of the killings is increasing at an alarming rate. People are becoming bolder, less frightened of your laws. If we don’t change something soon, we could be facing an all-out revolt.”

He exhales sharply. Bad news. On his thigh, Clarke’s thumb moves in comforting circles. He puts his hand over hers, because the sensation really is too much to ignore, and interlaces their fingers beneath the table instead.

“Right,” he says. “What do you suggest?”

“You need to send a message, Majesty,” Pike says immediately. “Make them see your strength, prove to them that your laws cannot and will not be disobeyed. It’s not enough that we catch the odd rebel and have them executed. We need to question them, find out more about their network—because, to me, it’s undeniable that these attacks are cohesive and planned—take as many of them as we can find prisoner, and then have a very public execution to send the message that we won’t stand for this anymore.”

“No,” Kane breaks in sharply. “Charles, _no_. Blood for blood is not the answer. Executing people who have not yet been proven to do anything wrong makes us no better than them.”

“So we let _them_ kill people whose only crime is to have blood of a different colour, and do nothing?” Pike’s eyes are black and sharp. “That makes us seem weak, Marcus.”

“Better weak than cold-blooded murderers,” Lincoln says. His voice is soft, low, calm, at odds with his hulking warrior’s appearance.

“What do you suggest then?” This time it’s Murphy who speaks, voice dripping with scorn. “What is the _peaceful_ way to stop them from killing the nightbloods?”

“Make them think the nightbloods aren’t the enemy.” Lincoln nods at Clarke. “That’s why the princess is here, is it not?”

“We don’t have time—”

He lets the heated discussion go on for some time, listening carefully to each point, before clearing his throat. The chatter stops immediately, and everyone looks at him.

“I want to hear what Clarke thinks,” he says. She looks at him, wide-eyed, and he smiles at her encouragingly.

She is silent, thoughtful for a moment, before nodding her head decisively. “Lincoln’s right,” she says, “the only way for this conflict to end peacefully, and for it to _last_ , is to eliminate the stigma surrounding nightbloods and integrate them back in as a natural part of the population. But that takes time; time we don’t have. What I propose is this: we offer protection in the form of a personal guard for all nightbloods who want it. All they have to do is come to the palace and give us their name and proof of their status, and in return we will loan them a knight to watch over them until true peace comes to pass.”

Her tone is factual, precise. She sounds like a queen. And she’s right, he realizes.

“A list with the names of all the nightbloods?” Pike asks, eyebrow raised. “That could be dangerous in the wrong hands.”

“Then don’t let it fall into the wrong hands,” Clarke replies. Her eyes are sharp, challenging.

“We don’t have enough knights,” Miller points out. “Of full-class knights there are barely two hundred; nearly a quarter of those are on assignment out of the country. There are fifteen in training due to graduate this fall. I don’t know what the number of nightbloods is, but I imagine it’s somewhat more than that. Plus we need to maintain the regular streetguard and castleguard, unless you want to open yourself up to an attack.”

Impossible to know how many nightbloods there were; these days, the smart ones kept their status hidden for as long as possible. But Miller was right. To believe that there was less than two hundred would be optimistic bordering on naïve.

Bellamy sighs. “One problem at a time,” he says firmly. “Let’s start with the lists. Lincoln, write up a speech to be passed around to the heralds. Kane, organize things so that we’re ready to accept the nightbloods and assign them a guard when they start to arrive. Pike, you’re in charge of the guard, as always—minimize the street- and castleguard as much as you can while keeping us protected. And increase the training speed of the graduate knights. We’re going to need them.”

There’s no protest; there rarely is, when he makes his decision. But there had been no further argument about Clarke’s plan, either.

That’s because it’s a good one, he thinks with pride, squeezing her hand.

He waits for any questions. There are none.

“Dismissed,” he says.

◊◊◊

Things are set into motion quicker than he’d expected. Within two days, nightbloods are arriving at the castle gates. He greets them in the main audience chamber, Clarke by his side. It’s as good a time as any to introduce her to the populace, he figures, and when she reveals her own status as a nightblood, many seem to feel encouraged.

“Things will change,” she tells the ones that come up to them for a personal blessing. “I promise, they will. For now, this is the best we can do.”

The amazing thing, he notices, is that they _believe_ her; after registering their names, many of the nightbloods thank her profusely, or bow so low their noses almost scrape the floor, or ask to touch her skirt. Even hardly knowing her, they love her, and he remembers what Queen Abigail had said back at their first meeting: _she’s loved by the people back home, and she’ll be loved by them here._

The next few weeks pass by in a whirlwind blur of activity. It’s obvious that Clarke doesn’t need his help with the nightbloods, so he leaves her with them and returns to his other duties. There’s a lot of them: on top of the regular tasks that were enough to fill his days, he’s now in charge of arranging nightbloods into the most convenient groups that could be looked after by one knight (Miller had been right; after a week, more than five hundred nightbloods had registered, with no sign of the flood slowing down), rearranging households, finding new places for them to stay, increasing vigilance across the city because now that a protection program for the nightbloods has been announced, it’s speculated that violence towards them will increase. Violence towards _him_ , too, for being the one to announce the protection program; he’s hardly allowed to go anywhere now without a personal guard of his own, and at least one knight stands guard over his room at night.

The end result is that he hardly ever gets to see Clarke. He’s often forced to work through meals, causing them to forgo even their nightly dinners together. He knows that this is likely to become a common thing in their lives, giving up time together in the name of duty, but that doesn’t stop the fact that it frustrates him. Frustrates him to the point of distraction, sometimes.

So when he runs into Clarke in the hall between meetings, he forgets that there are two guards trailing behind him. She smiles at him tiredly, gives him a weary “Hi,” and he pulls her into an alcove, where they are somewhat hidden from the view of people passing by.

“Bellamy, what—” she begins and then he’s kissing her, hungrily, fiercely.

“I missed you,” he says by way of explanation when he lets her up for air.

She smiles, looking vaguely dazed. “I missed you too,” she murmurs, before pulling his head back down to hers.

This time the kiss is slower, languorous; she tastes like sunshine, molten and golden against his lips, and time loses meaning.

One of his guards clears his throat and they spring apart, a flush flooding up her cheeks.

The guards at least had the decency to turn their backs, he notices. This knowledge doesn’t stop him from scrubbing the back of his neck in embarrassment. “I’ll, uh, see you later?” he asks.

She bounces up on her toes to plant a kiss on his cheek. “See you later,” she says. Underneath the blush, her face is stretched into a smile.

He turns back to his guards. “We should get going,” he says gruffly. “Don’t want to be late.”

They don’t say anything as they fall in step behind him, and for that he’s grateful. (Even if they had, he doesn’t think he could bring himself to care; a smile is tugging at his cheeks, too, and he doesn’t think anything short of disaster could wipe it off.)

◊◊◊

Eight hundred and six. All said and done, that’s the number of now-registered nightbloods living in the city.

One hundred and fifty four. The number of knights they have available to protect them.

They’re sitting in another council meeting, and the mood is grim. Pike is the first one to bring it up:

“Five nightbloods to every knight? That’s impossible.”

“We’ll make it work,” Kane says firmly, but Bellamy doesn’t see how. He’s lost sleep over this particular problem, has run the numbers over and over. There’s no way they can protect them all. Not with the knights they currently have.

Unless…

He turns to Clarke. “Would your mother consider sending some of Arkadia’s knights to us? As an act of faith?”

Her brow furrows. “I’ll send her a message,” she says, “but I think, at most, Arkadia would only be able to lend fifty knights. It’s still not enough.”

“Send the message anyway,” he tells her. “Does anyone else have any other ideas?”

“We can put the knights on a rotation,” Pike suggests. “It would leave some of the nightbloods unprotected every night, but only we would know which ones. Not a perfect solution, maybe, but it would help.”

“It helps, but it’s not enough.” Lincoln’s voice is a low growl, and he looks at Octavia protectively. “We need to work harder at the original plan. Finding acceptance for the nightbloods. I think it’s time,” he addresses himself to Bellamy, “for you to introduce the princess to the city as your intended. Many of the nightbloods know her already—and love her, from what I’ve heard—but they’re not the ones we need to convince.”

“The feast,” Clarke says suddenly. She looks at him, eyes bright, like he should know what she’s talking about. But he’s lost. “We’re already past summer solstice,” she reminds him, “but we could host one at mid-summer in a couple of weeks.”

It clicks. “Brilliant!” he exclaims, planting a kiss on her cheek. Then, to the others, he explains, “Clarke had the wonderful idea of hosting a public feast once a season in the interest of unifying the city. It would be the perfect time to introduce to people to my soon-to-to-be Queen.”

“It would have to be heavily guarded,” Pike says carefully. “Mingling the common people with nightbloods is a recipe for disaster—especially at a party hosted by yourself and the princess.”

Bellamy nods at him. “I’ll leave you in charge of that.”

“And where are you planning on hosting a party for the entire city?” Kane asks sceptically.

“Not the entire city. A couple thousand, at most. Most of them will have to be nightbloods, of course, this feast is for them—we can hold it in the garden. It’s the only space in the palace big enough to possibly hold everyone.”

“Bellamy,” Octavia warns him, “the serving staff are going to _kill_ you when you tell them they have two weeks to get everything ready for a dinner for _thousands_.”

“They’ll manage,” he says. “I’ll increase their wages for the next couple weeks to make up for it. They’ll grumble about me under their breaths, but they already do that anyway.” He grins at Clarke, and she grins back. “Do you have anything to add?”

“There should be performers,” she says, “nightblood ones, if possible. Music, dancing.” Her eyes are practically glowing, and he realizes that this is the first time they’ve discussed doing something _fun_ in the three months she’s been at the palace.

It makes him feel a little guilty, that he’s dragged her into the politics without showing her the more enjoyable side of being royalty in Polis. How long had it been since _he_ had enjoyed the luxuries that being king afforded him?

“Definitely,” he says with a grin. “All of those things. This is going to be one hell of a party.”

Whoever said you couldn’t save the world and have fun doing it?

◊◊◊

He looks down on the garden from the balcony of his private sitting room. Lanterns like fireflies are strung up through the trees, and candles flicker like stars on the tables. It’s like looking up into the night sky, and the sensation is almost dizzying.

No one knows he’s watching. The rumble of distant conversations reaches his ears, but people have yet to start mingling: they stand in tightknit groups, looking around warily. He picks out several knights hidden in the shadows, carefully watching the proceedings; they would stay out of the way, ready to intervene should anything go awry. He spots Octavia and Lincoln, her pale diminutive form next to his towering dark one making them unmistakeable. Lincoln leans down to whisper something in Octavia’s ear, giving her a brief squeeze around the shoulders, and he smiles.

Octavia is still unaware that he knows about her relationship with the scribe. He doesn’t know why he hasn’t brought it up with her yet; once he had gotten over the shock of it he had been pleased. Lincoln is one of his advisors and a trusted friend, and Octavia could do much worse. But he knows that his knowing is sure to shock Octavia and so he holds onto the information, waiting for the perfect moment to surprise her with it.

Clarke sidles up beside him, slips her hand inside his. “Ready?” she asks.

He looks down at her, and can’t stop the soft smile that creeps over his face. She’s beautiful—of course, she always is, but even more so tonight in a silk dress of pale gold. He’s wearing the same cream coat he’d been wearing at their first dinner together; he thinks they complement each other nicely.

“I’m ready if you are.”

“Then we should probably go,” she says with a laugh, “I think Kane’s getting tired of waiting.”

Kane’s waiting in the hallway outside, and he barely allows the door to close behind them before he’s striding off down the hall. “It’s hardly a kingly thing to do to be late to your own party,” he calls over his shoulder.

“Actually,” Bellamy replies, “I think that’s a _very_ kingly thing to do. What’s not kingly is rushing through the halls at this frenetic pace. Slow down, would you?”

Obediently, Kane slows, dropping back to walk alongside them. He runs a hand through his dark wavy hair and Bellamy says with disbelief, “Kane, are you _nervous_?”

“Only as nervous as you should be,” Kane snaps. “Tonight is important for a number of reasons, Your Highness, and you’d do well to remember that.”

“Relax, Marcus,” Bellamy says, resting a calming hand on his mentor’s shoulder. “We are well aware of the importance of tonight. It was Clarke’s idea, remember? We’ll introduce her to the people, they’ll all love her, the nightbloods will feel appreciated, red-bloods will realize that nightbloods are only human, and with the number of wine casks I’ve purchased for tonight, I’m sure we’ll all be getting along fabulously by the end of the evening.”

Kane snorts his opinion of Bellamy’s optimism, but doesn’t argue further.                                                                  

They step out into the garden, and a hush falls.

“Make way for King Bellamy and his chosen queen, Princess Clarke of Arkadia,” Kane announces in a voice that carries, and a path opens up through the press of bodies.

Hand in hand, they make their way to the front of the garden, where a table has been set up for the nobility; Octavia, Lincoln, and Pike are already seated. Clarke and Bellamy take their seats at the head of the table, while Kane takes his next to Pike. Miller stands several feet away, watching over them intently.

“How’s it going so far?” Bellamy asks, voice pitched low so as not to be overheard.

Lincoln shrugs. “About as well as you could expect. People are too tense to really be enjoying themselves.”

“Then we’ll have to fix that,” he says, standing with wine glass in hand, tapping it with a fork to get people’s attention.

The chime it makes doesn’t carry far, but it catches enough attentions that a whisper ripples throughout the crowd, and soon everyone is looking at him.

“First off,” he calls, voice carrying easily through the garden, “I’d like to thank all of you for coming, and formally welcome you to the Royal Palace. I’d also like to take this opportunity to introduce you to Clarke Griffin, Princess of Arkadia and my betrothed.”

Clarke rises to her feet beside him, offering the crowd a small wave and a smile. “King Bellamy and I want you to know,” she says in a clear, carrying voice, “that nightbloods are welcome here. In this city, in this nation—we don’t want you to have to hide anymore. We see you. We feel for you. Let this evening be the first of many among us as equals, as friends, and let it be the first step on the path to a future where none of us have to live in fear.”

She raises her glass as if to toast and takes a sip, and her motion is mimicked by hundreds around the garden. He can do nothing but stare at her, impressed, and she gives him a smile and a jab in the ribs to remind him that they’re not quite done.

“Please, be at ease,” he says. “This night is for you. Dinner will be served in about an hour; until then, drink and be merry.” He sits down to a smattering of applause and pulls Clarke towards him so he can plant a kiss on her cheek. “Winning them over already,” he whispers in her ear.

The atmosphere loosens up noticeably after their speeches, and soon the air is filled with chatter. He relaxes back in his seat, content to listen as Octavia engages Clarke in a conversation about growing up a nightblood in an accepting nation as opposed to living in Polis, their voices getting louder and their hand gestures looser with every glass of wine.

Dinner is served on silver platters: roast chicken in a wine sauce, served with wild rice and steamed lentils, followed by peach cobbler and shortcake. Wine flows freely, and by the time the last course is cleared away, he’s feeling pleasantly lightheaded.

Tables are pushed to the sides to clear a space in the centre of the garden and the band Clarke had hired is brought out. Their instruments are all wooden—drums, a lute, a couple of flutes—and the music they produce is ethereal, sorrowful, beautiful.

Clarke tugs on his arm; her eyes are sparkling, her cheeks flushed. “Want to dance?”

Happiness bubbling inside of him like champagne, he stands, takes her hand in his, and bows low over it. “Lead the way, m’lady,” he says, voice low and husky, words slightly slurred. She giggles in the way she only does when she’s had enough wine to loosen her muscles (he adores that giggle, and feels flushed with warmth every time he manages to pull one out of her) and drags him out into the middle of the cleared space.

The music changes as they step out onto the grass to something a bit more lively, birdsong echoing through a forest, water burbling over rocks, and they flow easily to it, feet moving in sync. He can’t take his eyes off of her: her lips are pink, soft and irresistible, her eyes glowing, dark and alluring, and a curl of her hair has escaped her pins and hangs over her forehead, perfectly imperfect. The world narrows in around him, until it’s just her—fingers light on his palm, twirling at his direction, skirts flashing—and he momentarily forgets where they are as he pulls her towards him and leans down to capture her lips with his.

A whistle and a smattering of cheers and applause brings him abruptly back to reality and he steps away from Clarke, sheepish grin on his face. The back of his neck is heating but she only grins back at him, not a hint of embarrassment on her face. “Let them watch,” she whispers, and tugs him back down to her.

It’s considered improper to display affection so publicly, especially between couples who are not yet married, but he’s the king and he makes the rules in this kingdom (and he does not possess the strength of will to deny her) so he kisses her back, losing himself in her briefly before breaking the kiss to lean his forehead against hers.

He can’t seem to catch his breath but it’s not from the kiss, it’s from her: how she’s illuminated by the lanterns in a way that makes it look like the light is coming from beneath her skin, how the reflection of the lanterns in her eyes remind him of ships out at sea. His love for her bursts in his chest like fireworks and the words are on the tip of his tongue, made easy by the wine, but before he can say them someone taps on his shoulder.

“Mind if I steal the princess for a dance?” Kane asks, a smile tugging at his lips. Bellamy blinks as the world slowly comes back into focus around him, and realizes that the grass has filled with other dancing couples. “I fear that if I leave you two unsupervised for much longer, it might result in some truly inappropriate behaviour.”

His tone is light and Clarke giggles at his words, but Bellamy feels his face burn. “Of course, sir,” he mumbles and lets Kane take his place, walking back to the table for a glass of water and some more wine.

From this distance, he’s able to observe the festivities. Miller, who must have been briefly relieved of his duties, is dancing with one of the stablehands, a boy with dark hair and a shy smile, and they move their feet cautiously to the music. Octavia is in Lincoln’s arms, whirling around at a much faster pace than that set by the music, and he smiles, filing the moment away as something to tease her about later. Pike is nowhere to be seen, but the man hardly seemed one to be fond of dancing.

He’s finished one cup of wine and started in on another when Octavia—now separated from Lincoln—rushes up to him, takes him by the hand and pulls him back into the crowd. “No hanging back, brother,” she says breathlessly. “This is your party.”

“I was taking a break,” he attempts to protest, but she doesn’t even hear: fitting a hand in his, she pulls him close to her and begins a lively jig, dancing to a tune only she can hear. Hopelessly, he tries to keep up as she whirls him around the clearing. He notices Lincoln now dancing with Clarke, Kane dancing with one of the cooks, as they pass by couples in a blur.

Octavia’s energy is endless and eventually he has to admit defeat, pulling his hand from hers and leaning over his knees, out of breath. The world is jittering and blurry and he blinks several times to bring it back into focus. When he stands up fully again Octavia is gone, no doubt terrorizing someone else, and Clarke is standing in her place.

She holds a hand out to him and he takes it. “I want to dance with you,” she says plaintively and he chuckles, pulling her towards him and folding his arms around her, lacking the energy to truly dance. She rests her head on his chest and he rests his chin on her shoulder, and they sway slowly in place while the world continues to spin around them.

Eventually they’re broken up again, this time by Harper who insists on dancing with him, and that’s the last of her he sees for a while as he’s passed from one person to another, from stablehands to kitchenhands to squires to commonfolk. His moments of rest are brief, just long enough to gulp down some more wine, before someone pulls him back into the fray.

He’s uncertain how much time has passed when a hush falls over the crowd and a feeling of foreboding crawls over his skin. The band keeps playing, but the dancing has stopped; people are standing still or moving through the crowd, whispering to each other or staring about with wide eyes. Panic stirs in his stomach although he can’t place its cause, can’t think clearly enough to figure out what’s going on.

Clarke. Where was she? He hadn’t seen her since— He spots her, standing on a table, wine glass in hand, oblivious to the change that has come over the crowd. She taps the wine glass to get attention and says, her voice fuzzy around the edges, “I’d just like to thank everyone—”

Realization crashes down upon him, far too late. He tears his eyes from Clarke to see the shapes that had been moving through the crowd step out into the open, dozens of them clothed in black with kerchiefs over the lower half of their faces.

“Nightblood filth!” one of them shouts.

“We don’t want a nightblood spawn as queen!” a voice calls out.

“Burn them all!” another cries.

Something flies through the air, glittering in the lantern light. _A knife_ , he realizes belatedly, and can do nothing but follow it with his eyes.

It lands with a fleshy _smack_ in a breast that’s covered with pale gold silk, and someone cries out in pain. Disbelieving, he raises his eyes to her face.

_Clarke_.

The world shatters around him.

◊◊◊

People are screaming. He pushes his way through them, desperately trying to get to where Clarke lies in a crumpled heap on the table, blood the colour of ink soaking the tablecloth and dripping to the ground. A hand grabs his arm, pulls him back.

“Bellamy—Your Majesty, you can’t!” It’s Kane, shouting in his ear, but his words are nonsensical, distorted.

“I have to get to her!” He pulls, desperately trying to get away, but Kane’s hand is like a vice.

“Your Majesty, listen to me.” Kane grabs his shoulders, turns him around. He hadn’t thought he’d be strong enough, but then again, everything is spinning around him and his bones feel like they’re made of water. “We need to get you out of here. It’s not safe.”

“I—don’t—care.” The words tear out of him in a sob. “Clarke, _Clarke—”_

“Miller’s got her!” Twisting around, he sees that Kane is right: Miller’s hovering over Clarke’s motionless body, guarding her while Harper turns her over, checks for a pulse. He’s too far away to see whether Clarke is alive or dead, but her face is pale as snow, a sharp contrast to the blood, black as night, that covers her chest.

“I don’t—I can’t—” He can’t get the words out around the saltwater lump that’s forming in his throat. His eyes never leave Clarke but when Kane gently tugs on him, pulling him out of the crowd, his feet follow.

The world blurs around him, panicked screams reaching his ears as if through water. Bodies are on the ground, he notices dimly; fights have broken out all throughout the garden, people wielding knives appearing as if from nowhere. Lanterns have been knocked from the trees, oil spilling into the grass, igniting small fires.

“Octavia, where’s Octavia?” he finds the words to say.

“Safe, last I saw her—Lincoln had her.” There’s a rushing in his ears but Kane’s words make it through, and the panicked knot in his stomach uncoils slightly.

“He’ll—he’ll take care of her.”

He loses track of time, briefly, and when his vision next settles around him he sees that Kane’s sat him in the chair in his study and is locking the door. He takes several deep, gulping breaths of air that is untainted by smoke and panicked screams, attempts to calm his racing heart.

He is king. He needs to take charge in times like this. But Clarke, _Clarke_ …

When his panic subsides it’s not replaced by calm, but with anger. It coils in his belly, a familiar beast, and bares its fangs. “How did this happen?” he asks Kane. His voice is calm enough but his eyes must be sparking; he can tell by the way Kane takes a half-step away from him.

“I don’t know,” Kane says evenly. “As soon as we find out, I’ll let you know. It’s chaos down there, Majesty.”

“Find out,” Bellamy grits out, “ _now_.” He’s holding onto sanity by a thread.

Kane ducks his head in acquiescence. “Please, don’t do anything rash, Bellamy,” he says, eyes pleading, his use of Bellamy’s name giving away his own imbalance. “Don’t leave this room. Don’t let anyone in unless they declare themselves. I’ll return when I have something new to tell you.”

“If you see Pike,” Bellamy tells him, “send him to me.”

Kane nods, and then he’s gone.

The second the door’s locked behind him Bellamy’s up and pacing, filled with a restless, raging energy. His thoughts bounce relentlessly off the walls of his skull. Battling with his worry over Clarke—that strong enough that it feels like it’s choking him—is the burning desire to do something, _anything_ , to get back at the people who thought they could take her from him.

A knock comes at the door. “Who’s there?” he calls wearily.

“Captain Pike.” The voice is unmistakeable; Bellamy opens the door a crack and after confirming that Pike is there alone, lets him in.

Immediately, Pike falls to his knees, head bowed. “My most abject apologies, Your Majesty.” His voice is desperate, almost pleading. “I assure you, when we find out who was responsible for the breach in security—”

“Stand up.” He sounds detached, colder than he would have thought possible. “That’s not why I asked you here.”

Slowly Pike gets to his feet; there is curiosity in his gaze now instead of fear. “Then why?”

“I’ve changed my mind.” His ears are ringing. Voices are clamoring in his head, but the desire to make them hurt, to make a difference, overrules them all. “How soon can you round up the aggressors associated with the anti-nightblood movement and present them for public execution if I give you all the resources you need?”

For a moment Pike can only gape at him, clearly stunned. “A couple of days, perhaps, Majesty,” he manages to say after a couple of beats. “But I’ll need written permission to—”

“Yes, yes, of course.” Bellamy strides over to his desk, pulls a piece of fresh parchment and a quill towards himself, almost violently dips the quill in the ink. In a quick yet elegant hand, he writes:

_I hereby permit Charles Pike, Captain of the Knightguard, to take whatever means he deems necessary in the capture and subsequent arrest of anyone believed to be affiliated with the attacks on the nightbloods._

_Signed,_

_Bellamy Blake_  
_King of Polis  
_ _Lord of the Stars and Protector of the Earth_

He signs his name with a flourish, adds his personal seal, and gives the paper to Pike. Pike reads it carefully, eyes widening, before folding it and placing it inside his coat.

“I’ll do what I must, Your Highness.”

Bellamy nods at him. “And do it quickly. I don’t want to see another attack like the one that happened tonight.”

Pike bows his head in understanding before leaving, closing the door behind him.

He’s left alone again, with his thoughts that insist on returning to Clarke—on the sound of the knife sinking into her flesh, blood blooming on her dress, the arc of her body as she falls. How pale and still she’d been.

Jaw clenching, he resumes his pacing.

Hours pass. Eventually he gives up on pacing and sinks, exhausted, into his chair.

First light of dawn is spreading through the sky outside his window. His study is on the opposite side of the palace from the gardens, so he has no idea what is occurring there; but he can see the city and the land spreading east, washed purple then pink in the light of the rising sun.

The sun has risen fully, his stomach is growling and his head is pounding—from the lack of sleep or from last night’s wine, he’s not sure—by the time a knock finally sounds at his door.

“It’s Marcus,” Kane’s voice calls without prompting, and with several long, quick strides Bellamy is at the door, opening it.

There are shadows under Kane’s eyes, and blood—both red and black—streaking the skin of his face and hands. None of it is his own, Bellamy judges. His hair is straggly and unkempt, his coat unmistakeably singed at the edges. If Bellamy had been less frantic, he would’ve suggest he take a seat, get some rest, before giving his update.

Instead, he blurts out, “How’s Clarke?”

A brief smile flickers at the corner of Kane’s mouth and dies. “Alive. Barely. She’s in the infirmary with the other victims.”

At his words, the block in his throat eases, just enough for him to take his first true breath in hours. Before Kane can say anything else, Bellamy’s rushing out the door, practically jogging down the hall.

Everything else can wait. This can’t.

He arrives, breathless, at the infirmary, and is almost knocked back by the _smell_. It smells of blood—the coppery smell of red blood and the salty smell of black—and medicine and burnt flesh, the last so overwhelming it makes him want to gag.

Nyko, their head healer, greets him at the entrance. “She’s back here, Your Majesty,” he says briskly, knowing without asking who Bellamy’s there for. “I tried to give her as much privacy as possible, but—” He leads him through a press of bodies, beds crowded together and every last one occupied, and Bellamy sees what he means. There’s hardly room to breathe, let alone give the injured space. He’s never seen the infirmary so crowded.

“I already had the ones with non-serious injuries moved to the largest audience chamber,” Nyko says grimly, as if in response to his thoughts. “Octavia’s helping me look after them.”

“Octavia?” Bellamy asks, alarmed, and Nyko gives him a wry look.

“Don’t worry, she’s perfectly safe. The entire palace is on lockdown. And I need all the help I can get.”

Clarke’s bed is at the back of the room, a curtain partially drawn around it. He pushes the curtain aside, and has to stifle a gasp.

“She’s so pale…” he murmurs, reaching out to stroke her cheek with the back of his hand. The flesh is warm; it gives him comfort.

“She lost a lot of blood,” Nyko grunts.

Still. Clarke is as pale as the marble the palace is made of, and looks to be as alive; her lips are almost white, her eyelids the faintest lavender, and even her hair, spread loose upon the pillow, seems to have lost some of its lustre. If it weren’t for the shallow movements of her chest, wrapped tightly in what looks like an ink-stained bandage, he’d have a hard time convincing himself she was alive.

He wraps his fingers delicately around a pale wrist—the skin is so translucent he can see every inky vein—and searches out a pulse. After a moment he finds it, fluttering as rapidly as a hummingbird’s wings beneath his finger.

“Her pulse is too fast.”

“Her body’s still in shock.”

Bellamy swallows hard before asking, “Is she—” He can’t finish the sentence, but Nyko understands.

“I don’t know.” The words crash down upon him like boulders. “As I said, she’s lost a lot of blood. But the knife missed her heart, hitting high and too far to the right. Lucky for her: any closer and it would have killed her immediately. There’s not much I can do for her, aside from keep the wound clean and ensure she gets her fluids. If she’s strong, she might pull through.”

“She is strong,” he murmurs. She’s one of the strongest people he knows. “She’ll make it.” He believes it because he has to.

Over the next few days, he hardly ever leaves Clarke’s side. He performs only the most perfunctory of duties—making sure the palace is under double guard at all times, assuring the injured and frightened nightbloods that they can stay in the palace as long as they feel is necessary—leaving the rest to Kane. Kane provides him with updates of what they know from the attack once a day, usually bad news: Forty-three nightbloods were killed, another ninety-six seriously or mildly injured; fourteen red-bloods killed, another forty injured. Six attackers were killed in the ensuing struggle, twelve more captured, but the rest escaped.

No, we don’t know how they got past the guards. We don’t know how many of them there were. We’re still looking for answers.

Every time he sees Kane, it looks like he hasn’t slept, and he feels guilty for giving his advisor the burden of running a country—but there is nothing he is capable of doing, right now, other than taking care of Clarke.

Nyko shows him how to change her bandages, how to check for signs of infection, how to properly apply the poultice; he shows him how to drip water and nutrient-rich soup into her mouth using a cloth, and how to stroke her throat to make sure she swallows. Then he mostly leaves them alone to tend to his other patients, checking in once or twice a day.

He holds Clarke’s hand constantly, monitoring her pulse. Puts a hand in front of her mouth to make sure she’s still breathing. Brushes her lank hair back from her face. Brushes his fingers over her eyelids, her cheeks, her lips, taking comfort in the warmth of her skin.

She’s still alive. She’s hanging in there.

On the third day, he swears he can feel her pulse getting stronger, and calls Nyko over to check. After listening carefully at her heart with a tube, he nods. “She’s improving,” Nyko says. “That’s a good sign.”

On the fourth day, she opens her eyes. He doesn’t notice at first; he’d been busy studying her hands, her delicate fingers. It’s not until she croaks out, “Hi,” that he jumps and twists to look at her.

“ _Clarke_ ,” he breathes. “You’re alive.”

“Kind of…wish I…weren’t,” she gasps, face tense with pain.

He smooths out the wrinkles in her forehead with his hand, then presses a gentle kiss to the corner of her eye, her nose, her lips. “I’m very glad you are,” he tells her. “How do you feel? Are you thirsty?”

“Hurts,” she says, grimacing. “What…happened?”

“Somebody threw a knife at you. Missed your heart. You’re lucky you’re alive.”

“Why—”

“Shh,” he chides gently, placing a finger over her mouth. “Don’t talk. Here, have some of this.” He holds a wet cloth to her lips and she sucks on it obediently while he waves Nyko over.

Something that might be a smile cracks Nyko’s usually stony visage when he sees Clarke with her eyes open. “Good,” he says. “You’ve passed the turning point. Barring infection, you should live. How’s the pain?”

“Bad.”

“I’ll get something for you.” He leaves, returning a moment later with a steaming cup. “Can you drink?”

She nods, and Bellamy supports her head while Nyko dribbles the liquid into her mouth. “It’s medicine,” he explains. “Should help with the pain.”

“Feels better already,” Clarke mumbles moments after finishing the drink. Soon after, she falls asleep.

He’s sitting by her bedside the next morning, watching her sleeping form, when Pike enters the infirmary. He catches Bellamy’s eye, gives a jerk of his head to indicate they should meet out in the hallway.

“What’s the status?” Bellamy demands as soon as he catches up to him, but Pike doesn’t respond until they’re alone in a private meeting room.

“Over a hundred people believed to be related to the attacks on nightbloods have been arrested and are being held in the cells.” Pike’s voice is heavy. “It was easy to get names from most of those who were captured on the night of the attack. Others took a little bit of…persuading.”

“How sure are you that they were involved?”

“As sure as we can be.”

He closes his eyes, breathes in deep. He’s not as angry as he had been five days ago but he remembers how Clarke had looked crumpled in the grass, how close she had come to dying, and rage flares up hot inside of him again. Enough for him to say, “In that case, we’ll hold the execution tomorrow at noon. Do what needs to get done.”

Pike looks at him, a shadow behind his eyes.

“This was your idea,” Bellamy says harshly. “Do you stand by it, or not?”

There’s an almost imperceptible pause before Pike says, “Yes, Majesty.”

“It’s not always easy,” Bellamy tells him, trying to convince himself, “doing what’s right for your people.”

◊◊◊

There’s a harsh pounding at his door before Kane comes striding inside, not waiting for a welcome.

“A public execution for over a hundred people _believed_ to be associated with the attack?” he explodes. “Pardon me, Your Majesty, but what the _hell_ were you thinking?”

“I was thinking,” Bellamy says calmly, “that we _tried_ the peaceful way of doing this, _and it didn’t work._ Dozens of nightbloods are dead—almost including the future queen—and maybe if we had taken this course of action sooner, they would still be alive.”

Kane scrubs a hand through his hair, rubs it over his face. When he speaks, it’s from between his fingers. “I understand you’re upset. I understand you’re angry. But that’s not a place you should be making decisions of this magnitude from. I’m your first advisor; why did you not come to me?”

“Because I didn’t need _advising_. I did what had to be done.”

Kane lowers his hand. His gaze is piercing. “And how sure are you that none of them are innocent?”

“As sure as we can be.”

“That’s not good enough,” Kane snaps. “Unless you have a written confession from every single person you plan on taking to the gallows, you risk executing innocents.”

“ _They’ve_ executed innocents!” Bellamy shouts. “Hundreds of them!”

“And if you do this,” Kane says, voice low, soft, dangerous, “you are no better than them.”

Heartbeats pass in silence, neither of them willing to break the other’s gaze. At last, Bellamy says, “It’s too late, regardless of what you think. The execution takes place in an hour.”

“It’s not too late until their necks have snapped,” Kane replies, but his voice is quiet enough that Bellamy can pretend he didn’t hear him.

Instead, he stands, looking at a point somewhere past Kane’s shoulder. “I should go,” he says. “Don’t want to be late. It’s my duty to oversee the hangings.”

“Alone?” Kane sounds alarmed. “Majesty, the streets aren’t safe—”

“Miller will be with me, along with several of our most trusted veteran knights. “I’ll be fine. _Sir_.” He can’t help the note of scorn that enters his voice; Kane flinches back.

“I’ll warn you one last time,” Kane says quietly. “If you go through with this, it will haunt you for the rest of your life.”

“If it saves _any_ lives,” Bellamy replies, “then I will bear its weight willingly.”

With that, he sweeps past Kane and out of the room.

Miller is waiting for him in the entrance hall, along with Harper, Roma, Mbege, and Diggs. Bellamy nods stiffly at them and they immediately sense his mood, falling in behind him and he pushes open the front doors and strides out through the gate and into the city.

The sounds and the smells of the street assault him. Without warning, he’s taken back ten years in time, to when he had run barefoot down these streets, hidden in shadows, thieving from market stands to keep himself and his family alive. His world had been no bigger than his mother and his sister back then. Now, the whole world was his world, and sometimes the weight of it threatened to break him.

What would his mother say?

His mother, who had taught him the value of life, who had taught him to be good—

His mother, who taught him that protecting his sister came above all else. He _was_ doing this for Octavia, and for Clarke, so that they could live without fear.

He hardens his heart.

The square around the gallows is packed with people. His guards carve a path for him through the crowd, and he makes his way with relative ease to the chair that sits on a dais facing the gallows. A ripple passes through the crowd as his arrival is noted, whispers traveling from one ear to the next. What are they saying? Do his people agree with this statement against crime, or do they believe him to be a monster?

The answer hardly matters—none would dare speak out against him, regardless of what they think—but still, he wonders.

There are ten nooses dangling from the beam at the top of the scaffold, and over a hundred criminals to be hanged. It was going to be a long day, and the sun overhead was already scorching hot.

He stands, and projects his voice to carry as far as possible. “Let today be an example,” he announces. His voice doesn’t tremble; he had thought it might. “The nightbloods of this city are under my protection. Anyone who disobeys those laws will be subject to my judgement.”

He waves an arm, and from the shadow of the holding cells, the first ten prisoners are marched. Their heads are covered by rough woven sacks, their hands tied in front of them, as they’re led up the steps of the scaffolding and nooses are placed around their necks. A lever is pulled, the trapdoors fall away, the bodies drop and hang, swaying, out of sight. A couple minute’s pause to wait for those whose necks didn’t snap cleanly to strangulate, cut down the bodies, cart them away, hang up new nooses in their place.

And repeat.

He forces himself to watch the whole thing. Watches as line after line of prisoners, covered and anonymous, are brought out to face their deaths. Refuses shade and water, ignores the conversation of his guards, keeps his eyes unblinkingly forward on the people he had sentenced to death, when he didn’t even know their names.

More than an hour has gone by—he judges sixty or seventy prisoners have plunged to their deaths—when one of the prisoners begins to struggle, kicking out at his captors and screaming, words muffled by the sack over his head. With a powerful kick, he manages to drop one of his guards, head butts another, and tries to run—and immediately trips, falling to his face and continuing to thrash and scream while the guards pick him up and lead him to his noose.

From where Bellamy’s sitting at the back of the square, his cries are unintelligible. But evidently some at the front have heard, for a whisper carries throughout the crowd and reaches him.

_Innocent—innocent—innocent—_

The man dies minutes later, but the words still echo in Bellamy’s ears.

He was only the first.

Word of his struggle must have reached the other prisoners, because when the next ten are brought out, two fight against their guards; of the next ten, five are fighting and several of the guards are knocked down, out cold. In the ensuing scuffle, one of the prisoners manages to remove the sack over another’s head with his teeth.

The freed prisoner wastes no time in shouting, “This is no fair trial! You have no proof! We have done nothing—”

She’s cut off by a guard twisting her arm until she cries out in pain, but Bellamy’s heart is in his mouth; she’s no older than him, and her hair shines golden in the sunlight, the same colour as Clarke’s.

More guards arrive from the holding cells, but the damage has been done: chaos reigns on the gallows and in the crowd. There’s pushing and shoving, stampeding, cries for justice and cries of pain and he sits above it all as the people of his city turn on each other. Turn on _him_.

“Your Highness, we need to get you out of here!” Miller shouts in his ear, but he only shakes his head. He’s king; it’s his duty to make this right.

He stands to make a call for order, but before he can open his mouth, an arrow whizzes by his head. He feels the ruffle of its tailwind in his hair but doesn’t register what it means, not until Miller grabs roughly onto his arm and pulls him down.

“They’ll kill you,” he hisses. “There’s nothing you can do to stop this, not now. So let me do my job and save your life.”

Feeling numb, he allows Miller to push him into a crouch as his other guards close in around him like walls. They make their way off the dais and into the street, but don’t make it far before a new roar comes from the incensed crowd. Suddenly people are pressing against them on all sides, more than one blade being waved angrily through the air.

Roma gives a gasp of pain and falls to the ground. He spins, catches a glimpse of red leaking from her body and running in the streets, before Miller gives him a rough shove forward.

“We need to go, Your Highness!” Miller is shouting. “It’s _you_ they’re after!”

Harper and Diggs move closer together to cover the gap in formation and despite his protests drag him through the crowd. All of his guards have their swords out, using them to keep people at bay. They manage to forge a path to the main street, where Miller and Harper unceremoniously pick Bellamy up and throw him into a carriage. Miller shouts instructions to the driver and Bellamy is left with no choice but to watch as his guards and friends stay behind, fighting his battles for him.

Once at the palace, he storms immediately up to his rooms, ignoring the curious glances thrown to him by the servants. Kane is waiting for him outside the doors; Bellamy pushes past him without a word and slams the door, locking it behind him.

Alone, he throws himself on his bed and puts his head in his hands. A familiar feeling of self-loathing is writhing in his stomach.

_Innocent—innocent—innocent—_ The words ricochet inside his skull. How many innocent people had died today, because of him? How many, like Roma, had fallen to the bloodlust of the crowd?

Gods above, what had he done now?

◊◊◊

He hears the rustle of the ferns as she pushes through them, the _swish_ of her feet through the grass, but doesn’t acknowledge her presence. They haven’t talked in days, not since the debacle at the public execution, and he’s not sure he wants to now.

He’s been avoiding her. He’s been avoiding everyone.

She sits beside him, arm brushing his. “Hey,” she says quietly.

He doesn’t say anything.

“Bellamy, listen to me,” she says. “ _Please_ , listen to me. You made a mistake, okay? It happens. But you can’t just hide yourself away and ignore everything. Your people need you. _I_ need you.”

“A mistake?” he bursts out. “People _died_ , Clarke. I made a decision in anger, and not only did it kill people, it ruined everything we’ve been building for the last four months. Octavia’s right. I’m not fit to be king.”

“But you _are_ king,” she tells him. “Running away from your duty doesn’t change that fact. Nothing changes that fact, unless you die or are forcibly removed.”

“Or I cede the crown,” he says bitterly.

She places her hand on his arm, wraps her fingers around his wrist. “You’re not going to do that,” she says, voice leaving no room for argument. “My mother sent me here to marry a king, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Everyone makes mistakes, Bellamy, even kings. Yours are just more catastrophic in comparison. And you have to go farther to atone for them.”

“How am I even going to begin to atone for this one?”

Her hand slides from his wrist and she entangles her fingers with his. He lets her. “I don’t know,” she admits softly. “But we’ll figure it out, okay? Together.”

He believes her.

For the first time he looks at her, and her face is full of hard determination and utmost trust. In him.

“Everyone must hate me,” he says, voice breaking. “Why don’t you?”

She reaches up her thumb to brush away tears that are sliding unchecked down his cheeks. “Because,” she says, “I would’ve done the same thing. If it had been you they were trying to kill, I would’ve done the same thing.”

There’s nothing he can do but stare at her, and she smiles sadly. She cups his face with the hand that’s not holding his.

“I love you,” she says. Her eyes gaze directly into his, midnight blue. “You know that, right?”

Had he? She had never said it before, not like this. The monster that had been clawing at his insides for the past week, tearing him to pieces, subsides for the first time. Its hateful growls are replaced by something warm that glows inside of him and has Clarke Griffin’s voice. _I love you_.

He reaches out, cups the back of her neck, leans his face towards hers. He kisses her softly, gently, as tenderly as he knows how. “I love you, too,” he says, when he pulls away. The realization dawns on him that he’s never said it aloud before, either; he’s known it almost since he met her, but he’s never _said_ it.

So he says it again, because he almost lost her and the world is crumbling around them and who knows where they’ll be tomorrow? “I love you.”

She surges towards him, one hand on his face and the other in his hair, and kisses him in a way she never has before. Lightning’s running through his veins, thunder pounding in his ears; he feels like a goddamn hurricane, wild, breathless, out of control. The exhilarating rush of it might tear him apart, if not for her hands holding him together.

They break apart to catch their breaths and he rests his forehead against hers. Somehow she’s in his lap, her legs wrapped around his waist, his hands wrapped around her back, holding her there; her eyes are inches away from his own, pupils so dilated her irises are little more than thin rings of blue. He can see himself reflected in them, can see what she sees.

“I can’t lose you, Clarke,” he whispers, voice breathless, desperate, broken. “I can’t lose you.”

“You won’t,” she replies, breath gusting over his face. “Bellamy, you _won’t_.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Maybe not,” she admits, “but I’m not so easy to get rid of, Bellamy, and no matter what happens I promise you I will never stop fighting, and I will always _, always,_ come back to you.”

He kisses her. _Gods_ , what had he ever done, to end up with her? He almost wouldn’t be able to believe she’s real except she’s _here_ , her lips pressed roughly against his, her hands tangled almost painfully in his hair.

The next time they break apart for air, he finds himself asking, “Will you marry me?” The question falls from his lips, unplanned. She laughs, gently.

“I think that’s why I’m here,” she reminds him.

“No. I mean…not marry me because your mother wants you to, or because it’s the right thing to do. Marry _me_ , because you want to.”

For a moment she’s silent, studying him, eyes soft. “Yes, Bellamy,” she says. “Of course I will.”

He kisses her.

It’s different this time, heated, desperate, slightly sloppy; her hands fumble at the buttons on his coat while his fumble with the ones on the back of her dress. A growl of frustration escapes him when he realizes she’s making much quicker progress than him; she giggles against his lips, murmurs “Here, let me,” abandons his coat briefly to reach behind her and make quick work of her own buttons.

The dress falls off her shoulders as she pulls her arms free of its lacy sleeves, and for a moment he can only stare and stare and _stare_ at her pale skin glowing pearly in the moonlight, how perfect and _beautiful_ she is. There’s a scar black as night and large as a two-piece coin above her right breast, where the knife hit her; tentatively, tenderly, he brushes his fingers over the raised skin. She shivers at his touch.

“Does it hurt?” Immediately he withdraws his fingers and she reaches out to stop him.

“No,” she whispers. “Not at all.” Then she’s kissing him again, her agile fingers making quick work of the last buttons of his coat, pulling it off him and tossing it to the side; her fingers are at the hem of his undershirt, contact between them briefly broken as she tugs it up and over his head.

She sits back and stares at him, at his bare torso, eyes appraising and smirk curling the corner of her lips. His skin heats under her gaze. “Goddamn it, Clarke,” he says, almost groans, when stretched-out moments pass and she does nothing more than stare.

“What? You don’t like being looked at?” She’s definitely smirking, and he wonders how she has the presence of mind to make a _joke_ of all things, when he can’t even think around the throbbing presence that is her in his mind: her skin, her hair, her lips, her taste, her feel.

Taking pity on him—or perhaps she’d reached the end of her own considerable strength of will—she leans forward, puts her lips to his ear, and whispers, “Trust me, you deserve to be admired.” Her breath on his ear sends a shiver through him, and he almost doesn’t notice her hands undoing the buttons of his trousers until she’s pulling them off his legs.

Her lips are on his collarbone, the hollow of his throat, the column of his neck, the underside of his jaw. His thoughts are dissolving like snow on his skin, sugar on his tongue, but he manages to pull enough of them together to say, “Clarke, I—”

“I know,” she whispers, words vibrating on his neck and sending shivers down his spine. “I know.”

He wonders how she knows, when he’s not sure what he was going to say himself. But he believes her, he trusts her, and it doesn’t matter anyway, not when his skin and bones are turning to liquid beneath her touch.

And finally he allows himself to stop thinking altogether, to ignore the constant ache in his chest and the gaping hole in his stomach, to forget for a moment about the needless deaths he’s caused.

Clarke is everywhere, Clarke is every _thing_ , and with her hands, her lips, her teeth, her tongue she unmakes his broken pieces and puts him together again, whole.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As usual, the next part will be published on Friday! Until then, let me know what you think!
> 
> Find me on tumblr: forgivenessishardforus


	4. Before: king of a broken land (pt 3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Lincoln and I have been investigating the source of the attack in the garden.”
> 
> “And?”
> 
> “The attackers snuck in by a back entrance,” Kane says heavily. “I talked to all of the knights; somehow, that one had been left unguarded, and someone knew. And we searched the bodies. One of them had a copy of the list of registered nightbloods.”
> 
> The implications hit Bellamy like a hammer to the chest, and for a second he can’t breathe. Kane says what he already knows:
> 
> “There’s a traitor among us.”

He wakes to the crash of the waterfall and her lips on his neck. His coat crumpled up beneath his head in a makeshift pillow, grass cool and soft beneath him, air hot and humid, muted sunlight filtering through cotton clouds and leafy trees, Clarke pressed warm against his side and half-draped over his chest.

“Morning,” he murmurs and she hums in response, moving her lips from his neck to his jaw.

He can’t remember ever feeling so content, so at peace. For the first time since the attack two weeks ago, he feels well-rested, and the voices that had been clamouring in his head have quieted to a whisper. He hasn’t forgiven himself for the mistake he made, but with her by his side, he feels ready to face it for the first time.

Placing a hand under her jaw, he tilts her face up and ducks his head so his lips can meet hers in a kiss that’s soft and sweet.

“Bellamy?” His sister’s voice echoes through the garden, sounding worried. “Bell, are you here?”

Shit. He hadn’t stopped to think of how people would react upon finding out he hadn’t returned to his room last night. Once, he’d gone hunting for a couple of hours without telling anyone to clear his head, and had returned to find the whole palace in an uproar over his disappearance.

“I’m here, O,” he calls, hastily pulling on his pants and undershirt. “Give me a second—”

Too late. Octavia pushes through the ferns and freezes at the sight of their undressed state, hands coming up to cover her eyes.

“Ugh,” she says, voice muffled, cheeks stained a bright red. “I _told_ Kane that you were probably off with the princess, but he wouldn’t listen. The entire palace has been searching for you since dawn. I’m the third person to check the gardens, I’m surprised you didn’t hear the others.”

“Must’ve been pretty deeply asleep,” he mumbles.

Octavia scoffs. “Yeah, whatever,” she says. Now that she’s found him, her voice has returned to the cold and indifferent tone she’d been using with him ever since the public execution. “You should probably go let Kane know you’re alive. I know _he_ worries about you.”

Hands still covering her face, she turns to leave. Something twists in his guts.

“O, wait,” he calls after her. “I know I made a mistake—”

“Your mistake killed people, Bell,” she interrupts sharply. “You’re the _king_. You can’t just rush into decisions without thinking through the consequences. And you can’t keep using keeping me safe—or keeping Clarke safe—to excuse your shitty choices.”

She’s gone before he has a chance to respond; he doesn’t know what he’d say, anyway. He drags a hand across his face. “She’s right,” he says to Clarke. “I should be better than this.”

“And you _will_ be,” she replies earnestly. “Your worth as a person isn’t determined by the mistakes you make, but how you acknowledge them. Face them. Atone for them.” She kisses his shoulder gently, before rising and stepping back into her dress. “Now, go talk to Kane. I’m sure he has a lot to fill you in on from his week spent being king.”

“Weeks,” he corrects her. “I wasn’t exactly fulfilling my duties while you were lying unconscious in the infirmary, either.”

“Then you definitely have some apologizing to do,” she says. “I’m sure he’ll forgive you.” Finished buttoning up the back of her dress, she presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth before slipping past the ferns, leaving him alone.

With a sigh, he finishes buttoning his coat and pulling on his socks and boots before following her.

Kane is seated behind the polished desk in Bellamy’s study, reading spectacles low on his nose as he reads through some papers. He looks up as Bellamy enters with a soft knock, his expression neutral.

“Your Majesty,” he says flatly, “it’s good to see your face again.”

Bellamy takes a deep breath. “Kane,” he begins, “I realize that I have behaved inappropriately—”

“You don’t say,” Kane snaps at him, and Bellamy flinches. Kane is slow to anger, but when his rage comes it’s always as cold and unstoppable as an avalanche. “You abandoned your post for two weeks in a time when your people most needed you. You made a rash decision that I specifically advised you against, and refused to face the consequences. You left me to deal with the fallout—which includes hearing out the complaints of dozens of upset citizens a day, issuing formal apologies and condolences to the families of the dead, and trying to stop the outbreak of a movement that would see _you_ removed as king—while you sat in your room like a child.”

It’s difficult not to shrink beneath his blazing gaze, almost impossible to hold himself straight and proud. “Marcus Kane,” he says severely, “I realize that I have behaved inappropriately and have made mistakes that will haunt me for likely years to come, and I understand that there is much I must do to make up for it. I owe you an apology for not listening and I owe you my gratitude for steering this country while my attention was elsewhere. But regardless of how I have behaved these past weeks, I am your king and you will treat me with the required respect.”

For a moment Kane only stares at him stonily, before his expression breaks and the hint of a smile tugs at his lips. “Good, you still have a backbone,” he says. Despite the smile, his tone is unforgiving. “You will make mistakes, Your Majesty. That’s a given. In the future, you might even make a mistake bigger than this one. And because of your position, the consequences will always be more far-reaching than you can imagine. It is your duty to own up to those mistakes when you make them. And to do everything in your power to rectify it. You owe your people that.”

“Point taken,” Bellamy says, ducking his head contritely. “I will issue a formal apology to the people of this city. I’ll even write it myself.”

At last, Kane’s face softens. “Remember why you’re here,” he says gently. “Remember the battles we fought just to get here, remember your beliefs that put you on the throne. You have a good heart, my king, one of the best I’ve ever seen. Don’t lose that.”

Inexplicably, his throat feels choked up. He clears it twice before pulling out the chair and sitting across from his advisor. His heartfelt thanks for his mentor’s belief in him gets stuck in his throat, so he simply says, “What did I miss?”

“Lincoln and I have been investigating the source of the attack in the garden.”

“And?”

“The attackers snuck in by a back entrance,” Kane says heavily. “I talked to all of the knights; somehow, that one had been left unguarded, and someone knew. And we searched the bodies. One of them had a copy of the list of registered nightbloods.”

The implications hit Bellamy like a hammer to the chest, and for a second he can’t breathe. Kane says what he already knows:

“There’s a traitor among us.”

◊◊◊

Who?

Not Clarke. Not Octavia. Not Lincoln, not if he was in love with Octavia.

Kane? The thought makes his heart twist. Unlikely; he had been the one to mention the traitor in the first place. Unless that had been intentional, to throw suspicion off himself.

Miller? Never.

Murphy? Possibly—the young knight’s motivations were hard to read at even the best of times.

Pike? Likely, he admits to himself. Pike had been advocating for mass executions of the rebels in the first place; he might have started the attack at the feast to get Bellamy to see his way of thinking. And he had been in charge of the guard.

Alright. So then, what next?

“We found Drew and Miles, the knights who were supposed to be guarding the gate, tied up behind some bushes several hours after the attack,” Kane is saying. “Neither of them remembers a thing. All of the attackers that were taken prisoner said the same thing, even when subjected to Pike’s more…violent techniques.” His lip curls. “That nightbloods were a plague upon the kingdom that needed to be eradicated. Most gave up the names of their peers when…persuaded, but if there’s someone who organized the attack, they didn’t say who.”

“In other words, a dead end,” Bellamy summarized.

“I would have liked to question them further, but you had them executed.”

Bellamy winces. “Yes,” he mutters, “I’ve been forced to recognize the folly of that particular decision several times over by now.”

“My apologies,” Kane says, and he sounds sincere. “Point being, there’s no one left alive who can give us insight into the attack.”

“Except for the traitor.”

“Right. And until we know for sure who it is—”

“We should proceed with caution.”

“I was going to say _you_ should proceed with caution,” Kane corrects him. “Whoever it is, they aren’t loyal to you anymore. Your life could be in danger. I suggest, Your Majesty, that you allow me to investigate the matter discretely.”

“Granted, but Lincoln will continue to assist you.” He hates to think of Kane being the traitor, but he has to cover his bases. “I want this taken care of as quickly as possible.”

After his conversation with Kane, he finds Clarke. She’s in her apartments still, freshly cleaned up from their night spent in the garden. When he knocks at the door, she lets him in with a mischievous smile. “That eager to see me already?” she says. Her hair is in a wet twist on top of her head, the buttons on the back of her dress not yet done up. The sight of her makes his mouth go dry. “I won’t say I’m opposed, but—”

“That’s not why I’m here,” he cuts her off before she can say anything else and his imagination runs away with him. “Trust me, I wish I was. But I just finished talking to Kane.”

Hearing something in his tone, she immediately turns serious. She sits on the bed, patting the space next to her. “What did he say?”

“The attackers at the feast were allowed in through a back entrance,” he tells her. “One of them was found with a copy of the list of registered nightbloods. Someone on the council has betrayed us.”

She doesn’t act shocked, or upset; she merely chews on her bottom lip introspectively before looking back at him. “What are the options?” she asks.

He runs through his line of reasoning with her, and she nods. “Most likely Pike, then,” she agrees. “He has the motive and the means. But what do we do about it? We can’t arrest him, not without proof.”

“We get proof. And we get someone to watch him. I’m not letting him run loose about the palace, not when we know what he’s capable of.” _Not when you’re vulnerable,_ he adds silently. _Not when he almost killed you last time_. His hand reaches blindly for hers, squeezes it tight. _I can’t lose you_.

She squeezes his hand back and looks at him, eyes full of understanding. “Ask Miller to put a guard on him,” she suggests. “Or have Miller do it himself. You trust him, right?”

“With my life.”

She nods; his trust in Miller is enough for her. “And in the meantime—”

“We act like nothing’s changed,” he finishes for her. “We can’t let him know we know. Just—be careful, okay?” He pulls her towards him, buries his face in her hair. It smells like lavender soap, and he breathes in deeply.

When he lets her go she takes his face in both her hands and looks seriously into his eyes. “You be careful, too, my king,” she says softly. “This is an act of insurrection. You could be a target as well.”

A chuckle bursts out of him, surprising both of them. “Not _could_ ,” he tells her dryly, remembering the attempts on his life at the execution. “Most definitely will be. Don’t worry, I’ll stay safe.” He drops a kiss to her nose and then leaves her to finish dressing, making his way instead to the library.

Lincoln and Octavia are already there, heads bent over several dusty tomes. He clears his throat to get their attention, and then says, “You guys both deserve an apology for how I’ve been acting the past few weeks. I made a decision that had disastrous consequences, and now I have to live with it. But what I did, I did it with the intention of protecting my people—not just you and Clarke, Octavia, but all of my people. You have to believe that.”

Octavia sniffs, turning pointedly back to her work, but Lincoln only nods at him. “Apology accepted,” he says in his soft, gentle voice.

Bellamy blinks at him. “Really?”

Lincoln shrugs. “We all have a monster inside of us,” he says. “I know firsthand what can happen when you let it out. We all make mistakes; do what you can do amend it, and then move on.”

Octavia glances at him, biting her lip, but still says nothing.

“About amending it,” Bellamy says, “that’s partially why I’m here. Kane told me about the breach in the guard and the stolen list of names; we know there’s a traitor and I know it’s not either one of you. But it must be someone on the council—Kane, Pike, or Murphy, most likely—which means we need to be careful what information is known by who.”

“You think you know who it is,” Lincoln states, looking at him shrewdly.

“I think it’s Pike,” he admits, “and Clarke agrees with me. He was the one who pushed for the mass execution in the first place; the attack at the solstice feast could have been calculated to make me more receptive to the idea. He disappeared from the feast shortly after dinner, and looked nervous when I called him into my study later that night.”

“If it was Pike, why would he murder a bunch of nightbloods to get to you agree to a plan that would arguably _prevent_ the further murder of nightbloods?”

“I don’t know, means to the end?” His brow furrows in thought. “Or maybe protecting the nightbloods wasn’t the end goal at all. Maybe it was getting the people to turn on me.”

“No one could have predicted how the execution was going to end,” Lincoln objects.

“They could have if it was staged.” He shoots Lincoln a wry smile. “You have an ear to the streets—what are they saying about me?”

“A lot of things,” Lincoln admits, “none of them particularly flattering.”

A laugh bursts out of him again, and Lincoln looks at him worriedly; he only waves away his friend’s concern. No reason to explain the joke: he doubted the people were saying worse things than he was thinking about himself.

“So if the plan was to destabilize me, it’s working,” he points out. “I trust you guys with my life, and all of our previous well-thought-out plans are unraveling around us. I need your help.”

“Of course, you have it,” Lincoln says. “My loyalty is always to you, Your Highness.”

“So all we need to do,” Octavia speaks for the first time—her tone is still cold and she doesn’t look up at him—“is stop the city from turning on you, stop the people from turning on each other, _and_ stop the nightbloods from getting murdered in the streets. As well as not revealing our plans to someone who has betrayed you while not making it look like you _know_ they betrayed you, and gathering enough evidence to arrest them so that they can’t betray you again.”

“That about sums it up.”

Octavia’s not looking at him, but he can sense her rolling her eyes. “Shouldn’t be a problem,” she mutters.

If she weren’t still angry at him, he’d clap her affectionately on the shoulder. As it is, he forces himself to keep his distance. “That’s the spirit,” he says, his tight grin not quite reaching his eyes.

◊◊◊

He calls a meeting of the council the next morning, and watches each face carefully as his most trusted advisors and friends file into the room. Kane isn’t the only one looking haggard from weeks of being overworked; Pike looks ashen beneath his dark complexion, his eyes hollow and refusing to meet Bellamy’s. Lincoln looks as calm and stalwart as ever, Octavia throws him a glare that makes it clear she still hasn’t forgiven him, and both Miller and Murphy look tired but stoic.

He, Clarke, Lincoln, and Octavia had talked at length the night before, coming up with the best plan of action. He had already asked Miller to set a tail on Pike, and Kane and Lincoln were continuing to look into the attack; all knew to report to him the second they turned up any information. He had written a formal apology to the city, with Clarke’s help, that he would deliver at a public address later that afternoon.

The purpose of the meeting is primarily to restore a sense of normalcy, so once everyone is seated he begins as he normally would. “Does anyone have anything new to report?”

“We have maintained the double guard around the palace since the attack,” Pike says. “There have been no further threats. After what happened at the execution, we’ve also increased our presence in the streets. Tensions are running high, but there haven’t been any outbursts that we haven’t been able to control. And, since the executions, there hasn’t been a single nightblood death.”

“Good,” Bellamy says, his voice sounding faint to his own ears. “That’s good.”

“Majesty, you made the right decision.” Pike sounds as if he’s trying to convince himself. “If violence against nightbloods is reduced, then surely it was worth it?”

“It’s too early yet to praise ourselves for our foresight,” Bellamy says coldly. “Tell me, Captain, how many civilians died in the riots that broke out at the execution?”

Pike swallows hard before responding. “Sixty-seven, Majesty.”

“Not including the innocent men and women we may have hanged because we didn’t have sufficient proof. Not including Roma, who died protecting me. It was not the right decision, and I refuse to see it as such. To do so is a disservice to those who lost their lives.”

Before Pike can respond he pointedly turns away, and asks, “Anyone else?”

“I received a message from one of my scouts this morning,” Murphy says. “She reports unrest in the countryside. Several of the villages to the south are beginning persecutions against nightbloods. She requested assistance.”

“How many?”

“A half dozen of us should be able to handle it. I’ll take Mbege and Dax, and a few other more experienced knights.”

“Can we afford to spare so many?”

“I believe so.” It’s Pike who speaks up. “Things are calming down here, and we don’t want to risk a flare-up in a place that is not so directly under your thumb.”

A not-so-subtle reminder that his power extends barely beyond the city’s walls, Bellamy thinks, grinding his teeth.

“Fine,” he concedes with a sigh. “Take the men you need and go. Send updates whenever possible. Have we received word of turmoil from anywhere else?”

Both Murphy and Miller shake their heads.

“And what of the nightbloods we had sworn to protect?” He can’t help the note of scorn in his voice.

This time it’s Lincoln who responds. “There are still about fifty nightbloods in the infirmary, recovering from their wounds. The rest we are guarding as best we can, but with the increased requirements for security in both the palace and the city, there aren’t many knights available.”

“I received word from my mother three days ago,” Clarke adds. “She agreed to send as many knights as Arkadia can spare, but they won’t arrive for weeks yet.”

Bellamy clenches his jaw in frustration. “Not much we can do but wait, in that case. Pike and Miller, make sure the knights keep their ears open for signs of unrest. Kane and Lincoln, keep looking into possible sources for the attack. Murphy, leave for the south as soon as you can.” He sighs. “Meeting dismissed.”

For the next few weeks, it does seem as if things are turning around. There are no reported nightblood deaths, for the first time since he become king nearly a year and a half ago. The uproar that was caused by the public executions has calmed down to a simmer, easily handled by his knights. Lincoln assures him that although people are still far from happy with him, they’re no longer calling for his head.

The only thing that isn’t going his way is the search for the traitor. Kane and Lincoln report to him every evening with nothing new, and Miller informs him that Pike has done nothing suspicious; in fact, his dedication to his job has increased, if anything, since the execution.

His advisors insist his life is still in danger, so he doesn’t leave the confines of the palace. Kane refuses to let him participate in the investigation, so he has nothing to fill his days with except for the usual kingly duties—which, once, had been enough to occupy him full time but now hardly keeps him distracted for several hours before his thoughts return to more pressing matters.

Clarke, he discovers, hates waiting as much as he does. She often joins him in his study, pacing back and forth while he does his work, waiting to hear word from the Arkadian knights or Murphy, muttering under her breath how if she was allowed to _do something_ , this would all be solved by now. (She’s placed under the same house arrest order as him and as much as she rails against it she never actually tries to evade it, for which he is thankful.)

Sometimes he merely watches her and listens; sometimes his frustration is so great that he joins her, their feet wearing twin paths in the carpet. Sometimes they go down to the garden or to her rooms, where they can lose themselves in each other for at least a short time.

Summer starts making overtures towards fall, with nights that nip at the skin and days that are still swelteringly hot. When almost a month passes with no word from either the Arkadian knights or Murphy, Bellamy begins to worry. The relative peace he’d been enjoying begins to feel ominous, the calm before the storm.

He sends Miller and Diggs off on the eastern road, the route to Arkadia, to see if they can find out what has befallen the knights, and sends Harper and Monroe to the south, where Murphy had reported unrest. Then he waits, stomach twisting with the sense that something is wrong, growing more irritable by the day until even Clarke refuses to spend time with him. He knows he should apologize, for the things he said that put sparks in her blue eyes and had her slamming the door behind her on her way out, but he doesn’t have the energy for peacemaking.

He spends his free time in the watchtower, hoping for the arrival of a message, or standing at a window overlooking the front gates, waiting for figures to appear in the distance. He’s standing at one of the windows in the library which affords him a perfect view, when Clarke comes up beside him holding a plate of food—he had skipped dinner again; he didn’t have much of an appetite these days. Without saying a word, she places the plate on a table and stands beside him.

It’s been three days since their last fight—since he had vented his frustrations on her, he admits to himself, and she had refused to listen to it—the longest they’ve gone without speaking to each other since her early days at the palace. A tide of guilt rushes through him, and he glances at her out of the corner of his eye. Her eyes are staring straight ahead, her jaw set, arms crossed over her chest. Stony and unforgiving, but she _had_ brought him dinner.

“I’m sorry,” he finally says when the silence has stretched out too long. “I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. Octavia’s always telling me that I need to stop lashing out at people that I care about, but I’m so frustrated and worried and _scared_ —nearly a month and a half without news and I can’t shake the feeling that it means something is coming, something horrible, and we need to be ready for it but I don’t know how, not when I don’t know what it _is_.”

A moment passes before she replies. “We’re supposed to bear those things together, Bellamy. That’s what it means to be king and queen. I don’t like it when you push me away, and it hurts when you refuse to share the burden with me.”

“I’ve never had anyone to share the burden _with_ before,” he confesses. “And maybe that’s not an excuse—I don’t want it to be—but it’s something I’m still getting used to.”

She nods, her attention still focused out the window. Several more moments pass in silence before she turns away with a sigh. “I should get back to Nyko,” she says. “I’ve been helping him the past couple of days. It feels good to keep my hands busy.”

“Thanks for the dinner,” he calls belatedly, when she’s already halfway to the door. She waves a hand in acknowledgement.

He forces himself to eat, eyes still trained out the window, thinking about what Clarke had said. By the time the plate is empty he’s come to a decision, so he returns the dirty dish to the kitchens before heading for the infirmary.

It’s not nearly as full as it had been two months ago, and is quiet with the onset of night. Clarke and Nyko are both moving from bed to bed, checking on patients, and he stands in the doorway for several minutes, observing, before either notices him.

“I—I want to help,” he says when Clarke finally looks up to see him, his voice seeming loud in the quiet space.

A smile steals across her face as she walks towards him, taking his hand gently in hers and pulling him after her. “Let me show you,” she says.

That’s where he is several hours later, changing bandages for the night and distributing medicine—Clarke had been right; it does feel good to do something with his hands, and it takes his mind off the worries that otherwise plague him—when Octavia appears out of breath in the doorway, eyes frantic and bright.

“ _That’s_ where you are, Bellamy,” she exclaims breathlessly. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Harper and Monroe got back nearly an hour ago. I tried to send them to wash up—they’re both covered in mud and blood and who knows what else—but they insisted on speaking with you first.”

Pulse spiking, Bellamy rushes out of the infirmary, Clarke close on his heels. They find Harper and Monroe in the entrance hall, collapsed against the base of a pillar; they make a half-hearted attempt to rise to their feet when he arrives, but he waves them back down.

Both are clearly exhausted, and Octavia hadn’t been exaggerating: their uniforms are so covered with mud that it’s impossible to see the original colour, Harper’s hair is matted to the side of her head, and their hands and faces are streaked with a rusty-red something that is undeniably blood. His gut twists painfully with an overpowering feeling of foreboding at the sight.

“Well?” he asks, trying his best to keep his voice calm and controlled. “What do you have to report?”

“Betrayal, Majesty,” Harper replies faintly. She blinks, shakes her head as if trying to pull herself awake. “We had only been on the road for a handful of days when we came across the first of the refugees—mothers, children, and elders. They told us that all the fit men and women had been conscripted by an army and their homes destroyed—” She swallows hard. “We continued on, and found nothing. All the villages we came across had been burned to the ground. There was no one left alive.”

A shiver runs down his spine, and Clarke’s hand finds its way into his.

“So Murphy was the traitor.” His voice is still calm, but a familiar rage is beginning to boil in his belly. “And he’s building an army…how many refugees were there?”

“A couple thousand, at least.”

“All on the southern road, heading for the city?”

“The ones that we saw, yes.”

He nods decisively. As king, it was his duty to care for his people— _all_ his people. “I’ll send carriages out to pick them up as soon as possible. The palace will provide sanctuary for as many as we can accommodate. Harper, Monroe—get yourselves cleaned up and eat something, and then meet me in the council room.” He sighs, squeezes Clarke’s hand for reassurance. “It’s going to be a long night.”

Two hours later finds the members of the council—minus Miller, who was still investigating to the east, and Murphy, who had betrayed him, and plus Harper and Monroe—sitting in the council room. It’s nearing midnight, and Octavia has gone down to the kitchens to prepare several pots of tea. The rest of them sit around the table in the stifling silence that follows on the heels of Harper’s story.

“But no sign of this army,” Kane says at last. Harper and Monroe nod in unison. “So we have some time yet before they attack—if it can be assumed that that’s what Murphy’s planning on doing.”

“What else _would_ he be doing?” Bellamy asks, a little exasperated. “He stole the list of registered nightbloods, knocked out two of our guards, almost killed the princess and succeeded in killing dozens of others, lied about unrest to the south, burned several villages to the ground, left thousands of people homeless and conscripted thousands of others into an army. Why go to such great lengths if he’s not planning on using the army against me?”

“A king must look at matters from all angles,” Kane says placidly. “We don’t even have the evidence that it was indeed Murphy who did those things—” At Bellamy’s outraged glare he raises a hand and continues, “Logically, it most likely was, but we must consider all options.”

“Fine, then,” Bellamy concedes, “let’s prepare for the worst case scenario. _If_ the army is headed for the city, how prepared are we to face them?”

“We’ll be ready, Your Majesty,” Pike replies immediately. “Locking the gates to the city will buy us some time and make it much easier to defend. Thanks to your initiative, there are more than enough civilians trained in weaponry to form a sizable army. If the approaching army only numbers several thousand, as reports suggest, then handling them will amount to little more than a skirmish.”

Bellamy nods; at eighteen years old, everyone in the city was required to train for a year in military combat. Of course, many of the lower class were unable to take a year away from supporting their families and livelihoods and preferred to take their chances with getting hit with a fine; and nightbloods were unable to train, under Jaha’s rule at least, because the smallest cut would give away their status. He had rectified the first problem, somewhat, upon becoming king by offering a stipend to everyone who participated in the training, with the promise of an additional bonus should their skills ever be called upon, and improved the second by lifting the laws that made being nightblood punishable by death.

“Good,” he says. “I’ll leave you in charge of the city’s defences. Keep me updated. Now—”

The door opens and he cuts off mid-sentence, expecting to see Octavia with the tea. Instead it’s Miller who stumbles in, limping heavily on one leg and looking like he hasn’t rested in days. The flash of relief Bellamy feels at seeing his most trusted lieutenant alive is quickly quelled by the first words out of Miller’s mouth.

“Diggs is dead,” he says voice sharp and hard as shattered stone. “We were ambushed five days into our journey; they killed him and both our horses, but only got me in the leg. I managed to play dead until they left, and then hobbled back here.”

His announcement is met with dead silence, but if that had been shocking, his second announcement is even more so.

“There’s an army numbering at least a hundred thousand on the east road, probably three or four days march from here by now,” Miller continues. “They’re being led by Jaha.” He pauses, swallows, then adds, “Murphy’s with them.”

◊◊◊

Clarke insists that she looks at Miller’s leg before he asks any further questions, so he waits impatiently while she tears away part of Miller’s pant leg to examine the wound in his thigh.

Breath hisses out of her. “You walked back on this?”

Miller shrugs. “Didn’t have a choice.” His teeth clench as Clarke pokes gingerly at the skin around the wound.

“You cauterized it.”

“It was that or bleed out.”

“Good,” she murmurs, absentmindedly wiping her hands on her dress. “You got lucky; I don’t see any sign of infection. It’d still be best if you went to the infirmary—”

“No!” Miller snaps, before softening his tone. “No offense, Princess, but it can wait.”

Clarke sighs, nods in acquiescence, and slides back into her seat.

“Tell us everything,” Bellamy says once Miller’s staggered into his own chair.

“We struck out along the eastern road like you’d commanded. Didn’t see anything at all for the first three days, but on the fourth we ran into the army, camped on the plains. As I mentioned, well over a hundred thousand people. We watched them all day from the hills, but it wasn’t until evening that Jaha appeared. He’s skinnier than the last time I saw him, and looked like he hadn’t shaved since he’d been banished, but it was undeniably him. Couldn’t make out the words, but he appeared to be making some sort of speech. Murphy rode up beside him like some sort of general—I thought we had to be mistaken, but he was still in uniform.”

“Yes,” Bellamy says impatiently, “Harper and Monroe already brought word of Murphy’s betrayal. Please continue.”

“Diggs wanted to get closer to see what else we could learn, but I insisted we turn back. Some of their scouts must have spotted us and followed, because the next night they attacked us—they killed Diggs on watch, but his scream woke me before they could get me, too. I hid behind Thunder—one of their arrows got me high in the leg, another just barely missed my shoulder, and the horse blocked the rest of them.” His voice is tinged with regret; the gelding had been Miller’s horse since he had become a knight six years ago, a gift from the king.

“When Thunder died, he fell on top of me. They kept shooting—I could feel the impact of the arrows in his flesh—before giving up, probably assuming I was dead. I probably should have died; horse weighed more than enough to crush my lungs, but the gods were smiling on me.”

Miller laughs, dark and humourless. “Smelled and tasted like sweat and piss and horse dung and blood, hotter than hell and darker than a moonless night. Passed out, for a couple of hours at least; took me several more hours to move Thunder’s body enough to get free. I was lucky—his weight on my leg had staunched the blood flow, else I surely would have bled out. Tied a tourniquet around my leg, cauterized the wound, made a crutch out of a tree branch, and started walking home.” He says this last like it had been easy, but Bellamy winces just to picture it.

“Any sign of the Arkadian knights?”

“No. I suspect they were attacked same as we were, and weren’t lucky enough to survive the tale.”

“Is the army mounted?”

“No, one of the few things that works in our favour—from what I saw, the army is almost entirely country folk. Their marching speed will be slow.”

“Did you take note of weapons?”

“We were too far away to see. The men who attacked us had bows, but no swords.”

“That’s good news. If they’re mostly country or village folk, chances are most of them haven’t been trained in fighting. Their weaponry will be basic. We can use that to our advantage. Anything else worth mentioning?”

“No, Majesty.”

“Good. Now let Clarke take you to the infirmary. Octavia—” who had arrived with the tea partway through Miller’s recounting—“will rouse one of the cooks and get them to make you something for dinner.”

“What? No!” Miller’s voice is as close to pleading as he’s ever heard it. “Majesty, please—war is coming. You need me.”

“War can wait,” Bellamy says severely. “You said it yourself, we have a couple of days until the army gets here. We have plenty of time to prepare. Now, you’ve been through hell these past weeks, walked hundreds of kilometers with a hole in your leg, and if I’m not mistaken, have hardly eaten or slept. So go.”

For a second Miller continues debating the point, before giving in with a sigh. “Fine,” he grumbles, “but only because you’re right, I feel like I could sleep for a thousand years.”

Bellamy catches Clarke’s hand as she rises to follow Miller out; her back is stiff and he knows she doesn’t appreciate being asked to leave the meeting. “I’ll fill you in on all the details later,” he tells her quietly. “Please give him the care he needs; I need him ready for battle when the time for that comes.”

Her eyes soften, just a little. “Duty requires different things of us, my king,” she says formally. And then, “But don’t expect to be able to hide me away in the infirmary when the army is knocking on the gates. I won’t stand for it.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he says, forcing a smile. He raises her hand to place a gentle kiss on her knuckles before letting her go.

Once the door closes behind them, he turns his attention back to his council. His first question is directed at Pike.

“You said handling an army of several thousand wouldn’t be a problem,” he says grimly. “What about an army of several _hundred_ thousand?”

“We’re vastly outnumbered, Majesty,” Pike states, raising his hands in a helpless gesture. “You don’t need me to tell you that.”

“No. What I need you to tell me is how we’re going to _deal_ with it.” His voice comes out sharper than intended, laced with the panic that is twisting in his stomach.

“Our greatest chance still lies in protecting the city’s gates. There are four; if we split up our army with a concentrated effort at the east gate, we should be able to hold them at bay for a while. If we defend from the top of the walls, we’ll be able to cause a lot of damage without receiving much in return.”

“But defending just the walls won’t hold them off forever.”

“No.” Pike sighs. “My next suggestion is to empty civilians from Lower Polis. Most of the buildings near the walls are wooden; once the walls have fallen, I suggest we set fire to that portion of the city.”

Bellamy sucks in a sharp breath through his teeth. He had grown up on in the southern part of Lower Polis, the part of the city just inside the walls; the houses there were wooden because most of the residents couldn’t afford stone or brick. “And what do we do with the people whose homes you suggest destroying?”

Shrugging helplessly, Pike says, “There’s not enough room behind the palace walls for the entire city, Majesty. We’ll have to give them the option to leave or to stay and fight.”

“So tell my people that I can’t protect them. Ask them to lay their lives down for me or abandon their homes.”

“You’re the king.” Pike’s gruff voice is unusually gentle. “Sometimes, it’s what you have to do.”

“I was _one of them_.”

“But you’re not any longer.” Kane this time, trying to soothe his anger. “It is in your right to ask this of them, and their duty to comply.”

Bellamy closes his eyes, breathes in deep. His anger isn’t directed at them, or even at the army marching towards his city; it’s directed at himself, and the cowardly decision he was unable to make a year and a half ago.

“You’re right,” he says. “Use the walls as the first line of defense, and burn Lower Polis as the second. I’ll give the evacuation order myself.”

“I’ve no doubt it will turn into a siege,” Pike says grimly. “We can only hold them off for so long and, given the size of the army, such a siege could last months. We need to prepare the palace as best we can.”

“Kane?”

“I’ll look into stocking up on food,” Kane replies immediately. “Luckily, we’ve already begun storing food for the winter.”

“If we can hold them off until winter, maybe we can starve them out. It might be our best chance at winning.”

“And if we don’t?” Lincoln speaks for the first time, voice low, eyes piercing. “You know as well as I, Your Highness, why Jaha has returned. I can see it in your face.”

“Yes,” Bellamy concurs hollowly. “Jaha knows that if he were ever to return to Polis, he would be subjected to death. No doubt his aim is to overthrow me and retake the crown for himself.”

“We won’t let that happen, Majesty,” Harper says staunchly, her utter determination drawing a tired smile out of him.

“But if it does?” Lincoln presses. “He’ll go after the nightbloods again. Very likely more intensely than he did before. Now that he has a list of their identities in his hands—” He breaks off, his calm exterior cracking for the first time Bellamy’s known him. There’s fear in Lincoln’s eyes, mirroring his own that bubbles just beneath the surface, a reminder that Lincoln, too, is in love with a nightblood. “We need to protect them.”

“How?”

“I have a friend by the western sea—” His words are puzzling, until Bellamy remembers that Lincoln was not born and raised in Polis. “In the unclaimed lands. She takes in anyone who needs a place to stay, whether it be for a week or a year. She’ll help us.”

“The sea is over a thousand miles from here. How do you expect to get there?”

“We’ll walk.”

“It’ll take months.” Bellamy sighs. “Lincoln,” he says gently, “there are hundreds of nightbloods in the city. You can’t hope to save them all.”

“No.” Lincoln stares at him, his gaze hard and unyielding. “But we can save some.”

◊◊◊

It must be three or four in the morning when he finally leaves the council room, eyelids heavy with the need for sleep despite the adrenaline buzzing in his veins. He makes his way to the infirmary where he finds Clarke just where he expected her to be, sitting on a bed beside that of a sleeping Miller.

“You didn’t have to stay with him,” he says by way of greeting, sitting beside her. “I’m sure Miller would be fine if you stopped looking over him for a couple of hours while you got some rest.”

Clarke shrugs, wringing her hands. “I knew I wouldn’t be much use to you in planning for a war, but I couldn’t stand to just do _nothing_ , to just go to bed like nothing’s happening. So I sent Nyko to bed instead and stayed here. He talks in his sleep,” she says, gesturing to Miller, before biting her lip and looking at him out of the corner of her eye. “It’s not good, is it?”

“No,” he says honestly. “We’ll be outnumbered ten to one, at least. We have the higher ground, which counts for something, but—”

“Not enough.”

“Probably not. Not unless we get very, very lucky.” He threads his fingers through hers, draws her to her feet. “Come with me.”

He walks her back to her room but instead of leaving her outside her door like he usually does he follows her in, sitting on her bed and inviting her to sit next to him. There must be something in his manner that can’t be attributed to the coming war because she asks, sounding alarmed, “Bellamy, what’s wrong?”

He stares at their intertwined hands, again admiring the contrast in their skin tones, searching for words. There’s no easy way to say it, and he can feel her tensing up beside him with every second that passes in silence.

“You have to leave,” he says at last, blunt and to the point.

“What? Bellamy, _no_ —”

“You and Octavia,” he says, looking up from their hands to meet her eyes. The colour has drained from her cheeks, her eyes an even more startling blue against the paleness. “Lincoln will go with you to the sea. He has a friend there; she’ll protect you.”

“Bellamy, I am going to be your _queen_ ,” Clarke exclaims angrily, pulling her hand from his. “This is my war just as much as it is yours. And I will not stand for you sending me away in some desperate bid to keep me safe while you stay here and risk your life—”

“Jaha despises nightbloods,” Bellamy cuts her off. “When we lose this war— _when_ , Clarke, not _if_ —the first thing he’ll do is begin calling for their deaths. And you and Octavia—my sister and the woman I love? You’ll be at the top of his list.”

“You might not lose.” Her voice is small, unsteady, unconvincing. He laughs humourlessly, takes her hand once again in his.

“You know just as well as I do that it would be very, very foolish to bank on that.”

“Can’t you come with us? Bellamy, he’ll _kill_ you—”

He brings her hand to his lips, kisses the pale skin of her knuckles. “You know I can’t.”

“There must be another way.” Classic Clarke words, but they’re lacking determination; she’s fighting for the sake of it, not because she believes anything will come of it.

“There isn’t. Believe me, if there was—”

Tears are clinging to her lashes, gathering in the corners of her eyes, one blink away from spilling over. He brushes them away when they do then pulls her into his lap, holding her to him. She tucks her head into his neck and although her sobs are silent, he can feel her body shaking.

“Listen,” he says into her hair, trying to keep his own voice from shaking, trying to remain calm for her sake. “I can’t lose you, Clarke—”

“I can’t lose you, too,” she mumbles, words vibrating against his neck. The words travel straight to his heart and he feels it start to crack.

“I can’t lose you, Clarke,” he says again, “and I _won’t_ , not if I can help it. Go with Lincoln to the sea. Stay safe, for me. When the war is over, you’ll hear. Then you can come home.”

“What if I don’t have a home to return to?”

“Look at me.” He nudges her chin until she complies. Her cheeks are wet with tears, her eyelashes glued together with them. He kisses her eyelids, the tears from her cheeks, the tip of her nose, her chin, her lips, before resting his forehead against hers and looking into her eyes. “I love you, and I will do everything I can to stay alive for you. But if I don’t—if I don’t, then I expect you to return to Arkadia, and become queen after your mother, and marry someone who will make you an excellent king, and have beautiful children, and be _happy_.”

“What if I marry someone who will make me an excellent queen, and have no children at all?” Her voice is shaky and her lips tremble, but she attempts a smile.

He laughs, kissing her again out of pure relief and love. “As long as you’re happy,” he tells her.

She pulls away from him—doesn’t disentangle them, but so she’s no longer buried in his side—wipes the tears from her cheeks, and takes a deep breath. “When do we leave?” she asks, her voice sounding almost normal. He feels a rush of pride for this princess with an iron core, a steely strength.

“Tomorrow. We don’t have much time; Jaha’s army will be here in a couple of days, and you’re not going to be the only ones leaving the city. I’d like you to have as much of a head start as possible.”

“So this is our last night together,” she says softly, her fingers toying with a button on his coat.

A wave of sadness washes over him at the thought. “I suppose so.”

The sly smile on her lips is almost enough to hide the mirroring sadness in her eyes. “Then I guess I better make sure you remember me.”

“How could I forget?” he asks, and then she kisses him. Her lips taste like the sea to which she’s headed, a sorrow he could drown in. So he lets himself: allows his thoughts and fears and worries to become uprooted and drift away like seaweed upon her currents.

Their fingers are gentle as they undress each other, their movements unhurried, hands and lips both burning and soothing as they traverse over skin, mapping ridges and valleys, rivers and shorelines, mountains and plains.

Inside of her is an ocean, vast and unending and unexplored; she pulls him in and he lets her, breathing her in until she’s all he knows.

Their mingling breaths a sea breeze, their heartbeats crashing waves on the shore, their skin sliding together like a boat drifting on the quiet swells under a clear night sky. When he closes his eyes he can see the stars, brilliant and breathtaking, brighter and whiter than sunlight. He slides into her, her waters surrounding him, her waves lapping against his hull. They are a boat and the gentle sea and the quiet night sky, connected in such a way that it’s impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins.

When they come undone, it’s together: breaths rising into a howling wind, mouths and hands working together to form towering waves that crash over him, dragging him down into her stormy depths.

It’s easy enough to get lost in the oceans inside of her, when she is also the light that will guide him home.

◊◊◊

Although they doze, neither one of them truly sleeps. Exhaustion pulls at him but he fights it off, not wanting to miss a second of these last hours of peace. They rest in each other’s arms; he plays with her hair while she traces patterns into his skin with her fingers. They exchange lazy kisses, but no words. The silence that surrounds them is comforting.

As the sun rises the room gradually brightens, and they lie together unmoving, as if holding still could trick time into stopping. But when the light is bright enough that he can longer deny that morning has well and truly arrived, he begins to slowly disentangle himself from Clarke. She only holds on tighter and it almost kills him to peel her fingers away from his shoulder.

“I need to go,” he says regretfully, his voice shattering the spell that had surrounded them. “There’s a lot that needs to get done still.”

“Wait.” She pulls back enough to look him in the eyes, biting her lip uncertainly. “Can I—can I draw you first? As something to remember you by.”

Speechless, he can only nod. Planning a war can wait a couple minutes more.

With a sigh, she sits up and gets out of bed. “No,” she says, when he makes to do the same. “Stay here. I want to draw you like this.”

She pulls on a robe and fetches charcoal and parchment from her trunk, pulling a chair over to the bedside. It makes him feel self-conscious, lying on his side facing her with the sheets crumpled around his waist (he’d moved to pull them up to his shoulders but she’d stopped him with a stern, “ _Don’t_ ”). Clarke doesn’t talk while she draws, so there’s nothing to distract him from his sudden awareness of every part of his body.

So he studies her while she studies him, traces the angles of her face with his eyes while she sketches the angles of his with quick, sure strokes. She draws with her lips pressed tightly together, curved up ever so slightly at the corners, a crease in her brow, eyes flickering from him to the drawing and back again.

A sunbeam catches in her hair before falling across the bed, and he tries to memorize the way the light dances in the mussed-up curls. A smudge of charcoal appears on her nose as she reaches up absentmindedly to scratch at it, and she doesn’t seem to notice. Her fingers are long and slim, delicate even in the way they hold the charcoal stick, like she is not holding it at all but merely guiding it.

His heart aches with all that she is, and all that he’s losing.

“There.” She breaks the silence with a final flourish of the piece of charcoal. “It’s done.”

“Can I see?”

She studies her drawing for a moment, considering, before nodding and passing it over to him. Momentarily, he is struck speechless with awe: the portrait is undeniably of him, his hair in wild disarray after their night together, freckles dusting his cheeks, sunlight bright in his eyes, hand curled beneath his cheek. She’s drawn his mouth in a soft smile, crinkles at the corner of his eyes, which seem to be looking out of the parchment right at him.

But there’s an element to the portrait that he can’t put a finger on, something that brings the drawing to life. Looking at it, he can feel her sorrow. He can feel her love. It emanates off the page, as tangible as the charcoal lines that the drawing is composed of.

“This is how you see me?” The words come out softer, more awed than he’d intended.

She scoots across the bed to sit beside him and study the drawing with him. “This is how you are,” she says simply.

He presses a kiss to her shoulder; she nudges at his chin so she can meet his lips with her own. They kiss slowly, tenderly, before he pulls away with a sigh.

“As much as I wish I could spend all of this day in bed with you,” he says as he swings his legs over the edge of the bed and stands, “I really do need to get going. The others are probably wondering where I am.”

“I’m sure some of them have already guessed,” she says with a smirk, but doesn’t try to dissuade him, only watches with interest as he pulls on his trousers and undershirt, before buttoning up his coat and buckling his boots. “I’ll join you in the council room once I’ve packed.”

He nods. Despite the fact that she was leaving before the war begins, she _was_ a member of council right up until the moment of her departure. And he wasn’t going to deny her anything that allowed him to spend a couple more hours by her side.

The other members of the council—even Miller, who looks much recovered after his night in the infirmary—are already present by the time he slips through the doors. As Clarke had predicted, a number of them look at him with knowing smirks on their faces when he enters wearing the same clothes as the night before.

“News?” he asks, foregoing greeting as he slides into his chair.

“I managed to hire a boatman for the first portion of our journey out of the country,” Lincoln says. “He agreed to meet us on the bank of the Erye River outside the city’s west gate an hour after sundown.”

“Good. Be sure to exercise the utmost caution leaving the city. Best if people aren’t aware you’ve left until long after you’re already gone.”

“I’ve already acquired disguises,” Lincoln says with a grim smile. “Don’t worry, Majesty. Everything will go smoothly.”

“I can’t help but worry.” He turns his attention to Pike. “Do you have an update?”

“I briefed the knights this morning on what is approaching us. Most of them—especially the younger ones—seem eager for the chance to test their skills in battle.” He sniffs to demonstrate his opinion of that line of thought. “I split them up into battalions assigned to each city gate. Easy enough to do, as most are used to working in particular squads anyway. They’re to spend the rest of the day—and tomorrow, and the day after that, if we get one—training with their battalions. I’ve assigned Miller to lead against the east gate, where the fighting will be heaviest—”

“Is your leg healed enough to handle that?” Bellamy asks, turning to Miller.

He snorts. “My leg is _fine,_ and even if it wasn’t, nothing short of death could keep me out of this battle. Besides, Pike has assigned me as general; I won’t be involved in much of the fighting myself.”

“I promoted Harper to lead against the south gate,” Pike continues as if the interruption never happened, “she’s proven herself well up to the challenge. Same for Monroe; she’ll take north. I’ve given Sterling west; he hasn’t got much experience but—” He lifts his shoulders in a shrug as if to say _but he’s the best we’ve got._ They were short on high-ranking knights; Diggs and Roma were dead, and Murphy had taken a handful with him on his fabricated mission. Safe to assume that they had either been disposed of or had betrayed him just as Murphy had.

“I’ve sent word to the heralds to announce that you will deliver a message to the city at high noon,” Kane says.

“Fantastic,” Bellamy says without the faintest hint of sarcasm in his voice. “I look forward to telling them that anyone able must join our army, and asking the citizens of Lower Polis to leave their homes.”

“It is—” Kane begins, before Bellamy cuts him off.

“My duty as king. I know, I know. Doesn’t mean I have to enjoy it.”

Clarke slips into the room as they’re discussing the idea of sending scouts to gather information on Jaha’s army and its movements. Pike is adamantly for the idea, insisting they need all the information they can get if they’re to have even the slightest chance of winning this war, while Kane is against, pointing out what had happened to Miller and Diggs and saying that they need all the knights they have alive and preferably uninjured for the war. She takes his hand as they debate, eventually deciding that the potential information gain is worth the risk.

She stays by his side as he tells his city of the coming war; she’s by his side when he goes to the training grounds to watch over some of the preparation. They have a last dinner together in his rooms, speaking quietly, somberly of inconsequential things. Neither of them mentions the future or its uncertain existence.

Shortly before sunset he walks with her back to her rooms, where she grabs the small bag she’d packed. Then they make their way to the seagate to meet Lincoln and Octavia.

He’s not sure why it’s called the seagate; even the nearest sea is hundreds of miles away from Polis. Probably for the same reason the gate facing north was called the skygate; it had struck someone’s fancy and the name had stuck.

Octavia and Lincoln are already waiting for them, both wearing non-descript cloaks with deep hoods that hide the details of their faces. As they approach, Lincoln holds out a cloak for Clarke; she takes it without a word.

Seeing his sister causes him a pang of sadness, of insufficiency. Everything he had done had been to keep her safe and in the end, he hadn’t even succeeded in that. She stares at him, her expression inscrutable, and he wishes more than anything that they could part on better terms, without her hating him for what he’d done. He wants her to understand, but his sister had always seen in black and white: she’d never lived in the shades of grey.

"Listen, O,” he says to his sister, “I know you’re angry with me, and you have every right to be, but—”

Before he can finish, she throws her arms around him, hugging him tight. “I love you, big brother,” she whispers. “No matter what.”

He holds her tight for a long moment before reluctantly letting her go. “I love you, too, little sister,” he says. “I always will. Stay safe. I need you to live.”

Slowly, he turns his attention to Clarke. It’s almost physically painful to look at her for what might very well be the last time. She’s wearing the voluminous, ragged cloak that Lincoln had given her. Its sleeves cover her hands, its hem reaching to her ankles; her golden hair is carefully tucked from sight beneath the hood, her face hidden by shadow.

He pushes back the hood so he can see her face more clearly, his hands lingering on her hair. It’s pinned back so he can’t run his fingers through it, so he settles for gently stroking the top of her head. For several moments they simply stare at each other, communicating with their eyes the words that are stuck in their chests, until Lincoln clears his throat pointedly.

“I’ll come back,” she tells him, eyes dry and hard with determination. “You can’t keep me away for ever.”

He laughs, and thinks it sounds more like a sob. “Wouldn’t dream of it,” he says, voice gravelly with emotion. “I need you far too much.”

Vocalizing it makes him realize its truth; something akin to panic stirs in his chest as he comes to understand the enormity of the task at hand, and how he has to face it without her. He pulls her into his arms, holding her to him with a fierce strength.

“You’ll win this war, Bellamy,” she says, words muffled by his shoulder. “I know you will. And as soon as you do, I’ll come home.”

“I love you,” he says, heart cracking with the truth of the words.

“I love you, too,” she replies, kissing him quickly before pulling back slightly from his embrace. A roll of parchment appears in her hand from somewhere up her sleeve, and she hands it to him. “This is for you. A gift. So you won’t forget me.”

“I never could,” he says, kissing her one last time. Her eyes are still dry, but he fears his aren’t.

How to say goodbye? The enormity of the words overwhelms him. _This is not forever_ , he tells himself, willing himself to believe it. _Only until the war is over._ So:

“May we meet again,” he whispers.

“We will,” she says with the utmost conviction before pulling away from his embrace entirely—his arms feel empty without her in them.

She turns and walks towards where Lincoln and Octavia are waiting, the seagate door already open. Beyond it is darkness, a set of stone stairs that lead down to a tunnel that will take them beneath the moat and out into the city. Lincoln hands Clarke and Octavia each a torch and ushers them into the darkness ahead of him.

“I’ll keep them safe,” he promises to Bellamy, before following and closing the door shut behind him.

His chest is aching hollowly. He stares blankly, thoughtlessly, at the closed door before remembering Clarke’s gift, still clutched in his right fist; slowly he unrolls it.

It’s a self-portrait, perhaps hurriedly sketched in the time between packing and joining the council meeting. Her face is solemn in it, eyes serious and lips unsmiling, but her hair is loose about her shoulders, a stray curl falling over her forehead. There is the same sense of _life_ to this portrait as there had been to the one she’s drawn of him this morning, so strong that he sniffs at the drawing to see if it smells of her. It doesn’t.

With a gentle finger, he traces the soft lines of her lips and jaw, the hard lines of her eyes and nose. Reverently, he rolls the parchment back up and places it safely in an inner pocket of his coat. A piece of her to carry with him.

Remembering her strength, he draws it into himself and makes his way back to the council room and plans of war.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, let me know what you thought! I live for your kind words.


	5. Before: king of a broken land (pt 4)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He rides at the head of the army. Pike flanks him on one side, Miller on the other; Kane had stayed behind, planning on riding with Sterling and his battalion to the western gate. Pike updates him as they march: of the thousands, ninety-one are full knights; the rest are city folk, some of whom had done the mandatory training, some who hadn’t. They carry an array of weapons from swords to hunting knives, longbows to homemade spears. A number are carrying large cauldrons full of oil to be heated on the wall and thrown down the other side; still others are carrying baskets of rocks and mid-sized boulders, for the same purpose. 
> 
> Dying sunlight glints orange off his armour as he marches, no longer just a king but a trained knight, sword strapped to his left hip and shield clenched in his left fist. The only sound is their feet, crashing down onto the paving stones in unison, a thundering beat, until they reach the outer wall and he calls the column to a halt. 
> 
> “This is where we make a stand!” he announces. “And we will not fall, because if we do, the whole city falls with us!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We have arrived at the last part of the first chapter! (Who's idea was it to write a 43,000 word long chapter, anyway?)
> 
> This chapter was a challenge in a number of ways (writing battle scenes is not my forte), I hope you all enjoy it!

Two days later, the army arrives on the horizon with the rising of the sun. The news comes to him over breakfast; he rushes up to the eastern tower where a lookout is hanging out the window, spyglass pressed to his eye.

Even without the aid of a spyglass, the army is visible as a dark smudge cresting the tops of the hills. Borrowing the lookout’s spyglass, he peers through it, but the army is still too far away to make out any detail.

“How much longer?” he asks.

“They’ll be at the walls before sunset,” the lookout replies.

“Then we’ll be ready for them.”

The palace is gripped by a frenzy of activity. Although the pace is frenetic, people move about decisively, without panic, an organized sort of chaos. He wonders if, internally, they feel the way he does, sick with apprehension.

It had been hundreds of years since a war this size had come to Polis. When he had seized the throne from Jaha a year and a half before, it had been a quiet affair; the fighting had never left the palace and the average civilian had been unaware anything had happened until Bellamy’s kingship and Jaha’s banishment had been announced the day after.

After encasing himself in the armour he hadn’t worn in over a year, he makes his way to the armoury off of the training grounds. It, too, is an organized bustle of activity as knights retrieve their swords and shields, in some cases bows and quivers or axes and maces. His own sword is hanging where he had left it, blade gleaming and sharp, handle encrusted with rubies and emeralds that had been put in after his ascent to king, leather sheath engraved with a pattern of birds and leaves. His shield is there, too, front emblazoned with the banner of Polis—thirteen stars around a mountain peak—and his own personal sigil—a howling wolf wearing an ivy crown.

The training grounds are packed with men and women, some so young that they are barely out of childhood, others with grey hair and leathery skin; some white-faced and ill-looking, others with clenched jaws and blank stares, still others with stiff smiles and forced casualness. There’s a clamour of noise: the scrape of swords being sheathed and unsheathed, the clang of metal on metal, voices raised in panic or shouting to be heard.

At the centre of it all is Pike, surrounded by the four knights he had given command to. Kane is with them, also outfitted as a knight. He pushes his way towards them; Pike doesn’t seem at all surprised to see him there in full battle gear.

“I march with you to the eastern gate,” he announces. His voice leaves no room for argument, and Pike doesn’t try; he merely nods and points his chin at the crowd behind Miller.

“There’s your battalion,” he says. “They’ve only had a day to train together, and some haven’t picked up a weapon in a decade or more, but for the most part they handle themselves well.”

“What’s the plan?”

“We leave for the eastern gate as soon as everyone’s ready. Jaha’s army should arrive at the walls shortly before nightfall; most likely they’ll wait until morning to attack, but we’ll be ready for them regardless.” Pike’s voice is clipped, factual; he scans the crowd as he speaks, waiting for puzzle pieces that Bellamy can’t see to fall into place.

“ _Attention!_ ” he cries after several moments of general commotion have passed, his voice impressively loud. “East battalion, form up!”

There’s a bit of a scramble, but in a remarkably short about of time, the men and women behind Miller have formed into a rough column, ten across and several hundred deep. Pike runs his eyes over them before nodding affirmatively.

“Lead the way, my king,” he tells Bellamy dryly.

He rides at the head of the army. Pike flanks him on one side, Miller on the other; Kane had stayed behind, planning on riding with Sterling and his battalion to the western gate. Pike updates him as they march: of the thousands, ninety-one are full knights; the rest are city folk, some of whom had done the mandatory training, some who hadn’t. They carry an array of weapons from swords to hunting knives, longbows to homemade spears. A number are carrying large cauldrons full of oil to be heated on the wall and thrown down the other side; still others are carrying baskets of rocks and mid-sized boulders, for the same purpose.

Dying sunlight glints orange off his armour as he marches, no longer just a king but a trained knight, sword strapped to his left hip and shield clenched in his left fist. The only sound is their feet, crashing down onto the paving stones in unison, a thundering beat, until they reach the outer wall and he calls the column to a halt.

“This is where we make a stand!” he announces. “And we will not fall, because if we do, the whole city falls with us!” That, he hoped, was not true, but he had learned long ago that pretty words were often more impactful than truthful ones. Just as he had learned that short speeches were more effective than long, meandering ones.

A portion of their army is left to guard the gate—it’s made of heavy iron and can only be opened by a crank on the inside of the wall, but he’s certain Jaha plans to break through it—and the rest of them climb up ladders to the top of the wall, twenty feet above.

The wall is wide enough for five men to stand abreast and made of sturdy stone that has withstood the test of centuries, but the height of it disorients him. The towers of the palace were much higher of course, but there he was surrounded by stone and it was impossible to fall—

He turns to the east, over the hills that roll out to the plains, and all thoughts flee from his head. The army he had seen that morning is much closer now, a carpet of bodies blanketing all but the nearest hills. He’s never seen so many people; he’s reminded of an anthill he had kicked once, and the millions of ants that had teemed out of it at the disturbance, crawling over the mound of dirt in an outraged flood.

Fumbling, he pulls his spyglass from his belt and holds it to his eye. His hands are badly shaking; it takes several moments for him to steady them enough to aim the glass where he wishes to look.

At the front of the army marches four people. On the right is Murphy, still wearing the royal blue cloak that proclaimed him of the king’s knightguard, carrying a flagstaff and banner, although without a wind he can’t make out the sigil stitched upon it. Next to him is Jaha, wearing a scraggly grey beard and hollow cheeks the way Miller had described. And next to him—

He squints, certain he must be seeing wrong. But no, it’s her, without a doubt:

Lady Diana Sydney, the woman he had been squired to for a year and a half before becoming a full knight. She had always thrown her full support behind Jaha and while her squire he had been forced to agree with her abhorrent opinions towards nightbloods, even watching in silence while she had the ones that were brought to her brutally beaten and questioned before sending them off to Jaha for judgement.

It was partially because of her and her close relationship to the king, he admits, that had had him promoted to the king’s guard upon becoming a full knight, but that didn’t mean he felt her owed her anything when it came time to overthrow Jaha and cast out all those who had stood behind him. Unfortunately, Diana had vanished without a trace several months before he had come to power, perhaps hearing from a spy of his eventual plans and choosing to save her own skin. He had not thought of her in the years since, just as he has foolishly not thought of Jaha until he had arrived with his army on the horizon.

As Pike had predicted, Jaha’s army halts for the night still a mile away from the walls, well out of bowshot. As darkness falls, their cookfires glow like lanterns, or fireflies, or stars; standing on the wall looking over them, Bellamy is reminded of the night he had stood on his balcony looking down at the festivities below. So much had changed since that night; not least of all the aching absence of Clarke at his side.

“You should go back to the palace and get some sleep, Majesty,” Pike suggests, coming up beside him. “There won’t be any fighting until dawn; your presence isn’t necessary here.”

“I’ll stay.” He can’t explain it, not even to himself, but he felt an urge to be one with his people, the people that would die for him come morning. He wouldn’t return to the palace and sleep in his bed while they guarded the gate and waited for war.

So he waits with Miller and Pike, sometimes dozing for hours at a time and sometimes filled with a restless energy that drives him back up the wall to look over at the army that waits beyond. And with the first light of dawn comes the shouted warning that the army is again on the move.

The army reaches the walls when the sun is still little more than a glow behind the hills, and far too late Bellamy realizes their disadvantage: they are facing directly into the sun as it rises, and would be blinded by it. Judging by the tightness of Pike’s jaw, he’s realized the same thing. The sky is clear, a periwinkle dawn; no hope for cloud cover to cut the glare.

“Conserve your arrows!” Pike bellows. “Fire only when you can be sure of hitting a target. Same for the defenses—use them to take out as many people as possible! We’re outnumbered. We need to fight smart.”

The bowmen do as commanded, waiting long past when Bellamy thinks he would have snapped from the anticipation. He feels like he’s been holding his breath for minutes, watching the shadow of the army approach with no attempt made to attack. And then, when the front line of the army is a mere fifty paces from the wall, the archers raise their bows simultaneously, and hundreds of arrows arc through the air to sink into exposed flesh.

In time to a beat only they are aware of, the bowmen reach for new arrows, nock them, and let them fly; below, hundreds fall.

The army keeps coming, a relentless surge.

If he were to describe the first days of battle, it would be like this: a distant storm that can be seen from the windows, dark clouds piled against the horizon, flashing with lightning, connected to the ground by sheets of misting rain; ominous for all that it’s soundless because of the unavoidable knowledge that it’s heading right for him.

The defenders on the wall carry the brunt of the workload, archers keeping the army at bay, others ready with burning oil or heavy stones to knock down those that avoid the storm of arrows. For the first week, there’s not much for the swordsmen to do besides wait, and provide help where necessary. Frequently, he pulls out his spyglass and scans the oncoming army, always seeking out the three who had betrayed their kingdom; always he finds them at the back, willing to let the others do the fighting and dying.

On the seventh day, they run out of oil and the top of the wall is breached, Jaha’s army throwing hastily constructed ladders against the wall and scrambling to the top. His world narrows to several pinprick points of focus: knocking attackers off the wall before they can fully claim the top, watching them fall to their deaths below; engaging in swordplay with the ones who gain their footing, where a single misstep results in death.

On the ninth day, the gate is knocked from its hinges, and the war is inches away from reaching the confines of the city. They use the gate as a bottleneck, driving away wave after wave of attackers, intent on not letting a single one through. Outnumbered they may be, but the walls and the narrow gate go a long way towards evening the odds.

If he were to describe the second week of battle, it would be like this: the way a low-burning fire flares up when provided with more fuel, flames twisting and dancing, sparks born where they clash with the sky, a whirlwind of energy and heat and urgency. He is part of the fire; he burns and he burns and he burns.

Miller implements a schedule, sixteen hours fighting on the wall or at the gate, eight hours to eat and catch up on sleep. During the sixteen hours of fighting, there’s no room for thought: only action, reaction, thrust, parry, dodge, strike; he as Bellamy Blake, King of Polis, ceases to be, becoming a creature indefinable by names or status. Warrior, destroyer, protector. During the eight hours of rest he collapses in on himself, sword and skin and soul stained with blood; mindlessly he eats, attempts to sleep, pushing the trials of the day out of his thoughts so that he can face them anew come the next.

Although they manage to hold their own, it becomes obvious that they are tiring; more and more often, attackers almost manage to make it through the gate entirely and more and more often, the fighting on the wall results in one of their own being tossed down to the ground to land in a bloody and broken heap.

On the fourteenth day, a squire rides up carrying a message for Pike. “From Harper,” she says, eyes frightened, hair escaping its tight braid. “She needs support at the south wall, immediately.”

Quickly, Pike rounds up a group of soldiers that had been off rotation and sends them off with a squire. To a man, they look exhausted, having just finished a sixteen hour shift; not one of them complains as they march for the south wall.

Pike looks grim. “We won’t last much longer,” he mutters to Bellamy, low enough that none of the soldiers can overhear. “Another week, at most; possibly less, if another one of the walls gets breached. We simply don’t have enough men.”

“Do what you can,” Bellamy tells him tightly.

There’s only so much to be done; mere hours after receiving word about the southern gate, a messenger arrives with news that the northern gate has been breached. It seems the attacks are coordinated, and perhaps they are, because shortly after Miller sends more soldiers to the northern gate, depleting their own army dangerously, their own gate falls.

Jaha’s army swarms through the gate, scales the wall from the inside to attack the bowmen still standing atop it. Confusion and chaos reign for unending moments—despite the fatigue in his bones he fights wildly, slaying several attackers and just barely fending off a sword that had been aimed at his neck—until Miller blows his horn, sounding the retreat.

“Majesty, you need to go!” Pike shouts in his ear, fighting alongside him. “We can hold them off long enough to initiate the second stage, but you need to get back to the palace! Today is not your day to die.”

If he hadn’t been swaying on his feet, feeling every parry drain more of his strength until he knows soon he’ll no longer be able to lift his arm, he might not have listened. As it is, he withdraws, leaving Pike to fight in his place. Feeling a coward every step of the long walk back to the palace.

◊◊◊

They burn Lower Polis. It had always been the plan, and he had known it would always come to this—although not after hardly two weeks of fighting at the walls—but that doesn’t mean it hurts any less to watch the smoke rise from the window in his study.

“It was my home, once,” he says to Kane, who stands just behind him. Kane says nothing in return; he knows. He had felt the need to say it anyway, to express in some way the sense of loss that is swelling within him.

For days, the sky is hazy with smoke and even the air within the palace is thick with the scent of it, odorous to the point that some people take to wearing cloth over their mouths and noses. The fires effectively stall the battle for a week, with Jaha’s army trapped on the wrong side. The reprieve comes to an end with an autumn storm and two days of lashing wind and rain; and on the heels of the flames comes the army, pushing their way closer to the palace with every step.

Fighting in the streets is different from fighting at the walls. Dirtier, closer, buildings pressing in; no battlefront, no clear divide between them and the enemy. The streets turn to mud from the persistent fall rains, and run with the blood of the thousands that die in them. After the first day, his armour is so covered in the filth—some of it mud, some of it blood—that the sheen of metal is completely hidden.

In the streets, it’s impossible to deny that they are vastly outnumbered. They retreat and retreat and retreat until their backs are pressed against the palace’s outer walls. Hardly a month has passed since the army had first arrived—a month since he had sent Clarke and Octavia away—and they’re forced to withdraw inside the palace’s walls and settle in for a drawn-out siege.

The sounds of the battle echo through the palace day and night, a constant background noise that he’s soon able to tune out.

There’s little use for his sword during this type of battle. He still spends hours each day on top of the walls, dressed in full armour to protect himself from any arrows that come his way, trying to feel useful (Miller assures him that he is, that simply seeing him marching around gives their army hope). Sometimes he watches the battle from the top of one of the towers where he can see the ebb and flow of it, waves lapping at a shore. He doesn’t like what he sees: Jaha’s army is seemingly limitless and every time they’re pushed back they surge forward again, with the mindless urgency of an ocean tide.

He spends hours with Kane, looking over their food stores and figuring out how best to ration what they have. Kane figures that they can last another month, maybe two, before people begin succumbing to hunger. He visits the infirmary, which is always filled to bursting; when he has time he sits with the patients and tends to them with his basic amount of skill, the way he had with Clarke the night news of war had reached them. As with that night, he finds comfort in the act of comforting others, solace in healing instead of killing.

(He misses Clarke.)

The beginning of winter makes itself known. Some nights, the temperature drops below freezing and the next morning everything is covered in a glittering layer of frost, which is destroyed by stamping feet long before it can be melted by the sun. The cold never lasts; by noon, the temperature is always comfortably warm, and any storms that come bring rain instead of snow.

Silently, he counts down the days to winter, knowing that if they can last that long, they stand a chance of survival. But with every passing day, he’s forced to admit that winter isn’t coming soon enough, that, barring an early storm and a lengthy cold spell, it won’t be enough.

He watches the battle from the top of a lookout tower, and knows that they are losing.

◊◊◊

“Majesty.” Kane’s voice, although soft, jolts him out of his light doze. He blinks his eyes several times in an effort to get them to adjust; night had fallen while he slept, and the study is cloaked in darkness. “The palace is hours away from falling. We need to get you out of here.”

The sounds of a raging battle come to his ears, muffled by thick stone walls.

“Falling?” The words sound distant, disbelieving, to his own ears.

“Yes,” Kane says impatiently. “They’ve just broken through the outer gate. Only the moat and the front doors stand in their way. You need to leave, _now_.”

The last vestiges of sleep vanish from his mind. “I won’t,” he says sharply. “Abandon my city and my palace to Jaha? Never.”

Kane sighs. “The city has already fallen, Your Highness. It fell the moment we burned Lower Polis to slow their advance. We knew going into this war that the only way we had a chance of winning was to hold them off until winter, and then starve them out; it’s far too late now for that to work. The war is already lost.”

“I have failed my city and my people. I don’t deserve to escape while they burn.”

“It’s not about what you _deserve_ ,” Kane says. “It’s about doing what is best for the kingdom. If you stay here, you will die. And hope of eventually defeating Jaha will die with you.”

He sets his jaw stubbornly. “I will not run like a coward,” he insists. “I refuse. If I am to die here, then so be it. At least I will die as king, representative to my people at the last.”

Kane sighs again, this time resigned. “I had feared you might feel this way,” he says. “I’m sorry it had to come to this, Your Majesty. Please know that I have the best interests of everyone in mind.” Before Bellamy can ask what he’s going on about, he gestures sharply at something behind him. “Miller, _now_.”

A shadow moves out from behind the chair he’d fallen asleep in—how long had Miller been standing there, silent as a ghost? There’s no time to ask before something falls over his head, enclosing him in darkness.

He opens his mouth to demand they tell him what’s going on, and air that tastes cloying and sweet lands on his tongue. “You can’t—” _do this to me_ , he tries to say, but the sedative does its job quickly; his eyelids are suddenly too heavy to hold open, his tongue thick and unresponsive in his mouth. Silence as peaceful as the grave sweeps over him, and for a time he knows nothing more.

When he regains consciousness, the ground is rocking unsteadily beneath him. It takes him several moments to realize that he’s lying across the back of a horse, hands tied to the reins and saddle cinched around his legs to stop him from falling off.

His bones feel leaden; it takes an enormous amount of effort just to raise his head a couple of inches and turn it to the side. Kane is there on his own horse, pale and washed-out in the predawn light, watching the road ahead carefully.

The road is hard-packed reddish brown dirt, wide enough to fit six horses abreast. One of the main routes out of Polis, then.

He opens his mouth to speak, but only a hoarse rattle comes out. Gathering saliva in his mouth, he swallows several times before trying again. “If you’re going to kidnap me and sneak me out of my own kingdom, wouldn’t it make sense to do it by a road less travelled by?” The words are still hardly more than a croak, but they get Kane’s attention; he glances over, looking first surprised at Bellamy’s wakefulness and then amused at his tone.

“We did that for the first couple of hours. We can make much better time by the main road, though; there are scouts riding ahead and behind to warn us of any oncoming traffic.”

“You disobeyed me,” Bellamy says, trying his best to sound severe; unfortunately, he still sounds like a dying toad. “You went against my express wishes, drugged me, and then dragged me out of my own palace like I was little more than a package. I’ve had people hanged for less.”

“We did what we had to. There was no time to argue. You can be stubborn, Majesty; convincing you to leave might have taken hours.”

“I am still furious with you,” Bellamy mutters, his threatening tone ruined somewhat by the fact that his voice vanishes on the fifth word.

Kane’s lip twitches. “Understandable.”

“How many others did you manage to get out of the palace?”

Silence greets him.

“ _None_? So you left everyone else to be slaughtered by Jaha?”

“You were the priority. Four squires came with us to act as scouts and guard. Everyone else insisted on staying to fight.”

“You said the war had already been lost.”

“It has.”

“Then why did you let _them_ stay while you took me—”

“Because it’s their duty to defend Polis from attackers.”

“It’s my duty, too! Don’t forget that I’m a sworn knight, too, Kane, the best one you’ve ever seen—”

“You are king first, knight second. Right now, your duty is to stay alive and be someone your people can rally behind.” Kane looks at him sympathetically. “It’s unlikely that Jaha will kill them. You, he would have had no other choice. But as knights, they can be sworn to him and made useful.”

For a moment Bellamy is silent, thinking that over. Given the choice between death and working for Jaha, he knew his friends would choose Jaha; after all, they had before.

“Miller?” he asks at last, almost afraid of hearing the answer.

“He volunteered to stay behind and try to get close to Jaha. He has Carus; that bird will be able to find you wherever we are. He can provide us with updates, and hopefully let us know when it’s safe to return.”

“If Jaha finds out that we were close—”

“He won’t.”

“What about Pike?”

Kane’s voice is strained. “Pike’s dead.”

The two words crash over him. “What? When?”

“When the outer gates fell. Pike was right in the thick of it, but Miller saw him get run through with a sword. That was just before we came up to get you.”

His head is still spinning, but he manages to say, “Harper? Monroe?”

“I’m not sure.”

He takes a breath to steady himself. This was war; he couldn’t protect everyone. Thousands had died already. And if he could only save one, and that one was Kane—

Slowly, strength returns to his body as the last of the sedative wears off. Untangling his hands from the reins, he sits up straight in his saddle.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Lincoln told me of an old friend of his. Indra. She lives in the mountains near the border. From what Lincoln said, she’s a formidable fighter and a valuable ally. Hopefully she’ll take us in.”

“And then what?”

“And then we figure out how to take our city back,” Kane says simply.

As if such a thing could ever be simple.

◊◊◊

It takes several days of hard riding to reach the mountains. Once they do, Kane takes a crumpled, hand-drawn map out of his pocket and leads them through the mountain pass, pausing every so often to check their route. After a couple of hours, he takes them off the road entirely and into the scraggly pines that grow in this environment.

The scouts ride with them now, two in front and two behind; to put distance between them would be to risk getting lost. For four more days they wander—seemingly aimlessly—through ravines and valleys, forests and mountain slopes. Whenever he asks Kane if it’s possible they’ve gotten lost, Kane only points to a nearby mountain peak and shows where it’s labelled on the map; “We’re on the right track,” he says, over and over again.

They find a river which Kane insists must be the Laris River, and follow it through the trees and into a valley, where it disappears into a canyon cut out of the mountain. They’re halfway across the valley when a number of armed men ride out of the canyon’s mouth, some wielding bows, others swords.

“Identify yourselves,” the rider in front says when he’s within earshot. He rears his horse to a stop a dozen feet away, sword pointed threateningly at them.

“My name is Marcus Kane,” begins Kane, “And this is King Bellamy Blake of Polis—”

“Just Bellamy,” Bellamy interrupts. “I am king no longer.”

Kane shoots him a scrutinizing look but chooses not to question him, instead turning his attention back to the rider. “We’ve come seeking Indra.”

“She may be here,” the man says guardedly. “How did you learn of this place?”

“From Lincoln Komtrikru, one of the scribes at the palace. He told me he spent his youth here. Indra was a mentor to him.”

“I have heard mention of him.” The rider looks them over, his gaze taking in their noble attire, their bedraggled appearance. “I will take you to her. Hand over your weapons, and then follow me.”

Obediently, they strip themselves of sword and daggers—and two of the scouts of longbows and quivers—and then follow the man. The other riders flank them on all sides, watching them carefully.

The temperature drops as they enter the canyon; its walls are steep and although the sun is high in the sky, its beams don’t reach the ground. The river winds through its base, and they walk their horses along the rocky shoreline for about a mile before the canyon opens up again into a valley surrounded on all sides by mountain walls.

And in the valley is a village.

His jaw drops upon seeing it before he can school his expression. Narrow dirt roads mark the valley like spokes of a wheel, lined by rough wooden huts. At the centre of the valley, where the hub of a wheel would be, is a much longer wooden building leading onto a town square. The village is tiny—perhaps a quarter of the size of Lower Polis—but bustling, people moving with purpose about its streets. Several people glance at the visitors curiously, but none stop what they’re doing to openly stare.

It’s an interesting sensation, being ignored; in his year and a half of being king, he had grown used to being recognized everywhere he went, bowed to and kneeled to, whispers following in his wake. Here, although still technically within the border of Polis, he was unknown. These people were not his. He owed nothing to them.

He relishes the feeling. His time as king had been marked, over and over again, by failure. Now, he is no longer king. He is simply a man.

The man who had led them into the village dismounts and strides into the long building; minutes later he reappears, a dark-skinned woman at his side.

“I am Indra,” she says, approaching them. “Ronan said you wish to speak with me?” Her tone is far from welcoming, but Kane appears unfazed.

“Do you remember a man by the name of Lincoln Komtrikru?” he asks.

Indra appraises him warily. “He grew up here. Left when he became a man to travel the world, and never returned. Why?”

“He now works as a scribe and advisor to the king in Polis. He gave me your name and a map to this village, and said that we could come to you in a time of need.”

“I have no wish to become involved in Polis politics.”

“Do you not have a duty to your king?” The words come out sharper than Bellamy had intended and Indra turns her attention to him. The knowing look in her eyes tells him she’s already been told who he is, and the tightness around her mouth tells him she doesn’t care.

“I recognize no king,” she says coolly, “as he has never recognized me.”

Angrily, he opens his mouth to retort, before snapping it shut. She’s right; as much as he might wish it weren’t true, he has no jurisdiction here. And even if he did, he had lost his claim to kingship the moment the palace had fallen to Jaha.

“We’re not asking you to become involved in politics,” Kane says, smoothly cutting in. “We’re asking only for a place of refuge until it’s safe for us to return home.”

“Why?” Indra’s cold, hard manner hasn’t softened in the slightest.

“Because Polis has fallen to a man who wishes us dead.”

If Indra is surprised by this news, she doesn’t show it. “And this man won’t be able to follow you here?”

“No one outside of us four and Lincoln know where this village is. Lincoln departed for the sea two months ago; no one else in Polis could possibly know where we’ve gone.” Kane’s voice turns pleading. “Please. You would be saving our lives.”

Indra hesitates for a moment before saying, “Fine. There’s three empty huts on the east side of the village; Ronan will show you where it is. You can stay there temporarily. You will be expected to work. Right now, we’re preparing our food stores for winter.”

“Our thanks for your most gracious hospitality,” Kane says sincerely, placing his hand over his heart in the knight’s salute.

Indra snorts. “I’m doing it for Lincoln,” she says.

◊◊◊

“Only looking for a place of refuge?” Bellamy explodes at Kane once they’re alone in the hut Indra has assigned to them. “Kane, I am not going to sit here and hide while my city is at war. This village is full of warriors; you saw them. We should _use_ them.”

“We’re not using anyone or going anywhere,” Kane says calmly, “until we receive word from Miller. I did not sneak you out of Polis just so you could get yourself killed trying to get back in.”

“I could go in disguise—”

“And do what? Even if Jaha somehow falls for your disguise, he’d still slaughter you and whatever help you manage to wrangle up at the gates. We’re only a couple weeks away from winter, Your Majesty—”

“Don’t call me that,” Bellamy interrupts wearily. “I’m king no longer.”

“Bellamy, then,” Kane says. “With winter only a couple weeks away, conditions are unfavourable for _any_ type of attack, even if you happened to have a force that matched Jaha’s in size. You’d be fighting him in the very conditions we’d been hoping for.”

Bellamy is silent, trying to think of another argument that would hold up in the face of Kane’s relentless logic. “Fine,” he says grudgingly. “I’ll wait out winter here. And then I march for Polis.”

The next day, Indra has some of her people show them around the village: they visit the weaver, the butcher, the blacksmith; the fields that lay barren after having already been harvested, the woods and valleys beyond the cirque that are frequented by hunters. They’re allowed to join the warriors training session, and Ronan can’t hide his approval when he sees Kane and Bellamy’s skill with the sword.

“You will make good workers,” he says, impressed.

The days pass quickly, with all daylight hours dedicated to preparing for the coming winter. The two squires with bows are added to the hunting party, while the other two help the butcher; Kane spends several hours each day teaching the warriors-in-training more advanced fighting techniques. Bellamy does whatever is needed of him, which most often is labour-intensive work, such as chopping firewood.

It’s a level of physical exertion he’s unused to, and he goes to bed every night with aching muscles and stiff joints. He enjoys the proof of his hard work, though, almost as much as he enjoys the work itself; it leaves no room for other thoughts, like where Clarke and his sister are, or what’s currently happening in Polis while he’s hidden safe in a mountain village.

Bellamy is helping some others dig cold cellars for winter storage a little over a week after they arrived at the village when a shrill hawk’s cry echoes through the valley. “Carus!” he cries, looking up at the sound. The hawk that had been given to him upon becoming a knight is circling in the blue sky above; upon spotting Bellamy, he dives down and settles himself on Bellamy’s shoulder, the bird’s talons digging painfully into his flesh.

He ignores the pain, because tied to Carus’ left leg is a rolled up note. Walking away from the others to gain some privacy, he eagerly unties and unrolls it, before sighing. The note is undeniably written in Miller’s hand, but using a cipher that makes it impossible to decode at first glance.

The note crumpled up in his right fist, he abandons his work and heads for his cabin. Once there, he sits down at the desk and scrounges around in the drawer for a fragment of parchment before pulling a quill and inkpot forward.

It takes numerous attempts to discover the keyword that Miller had chosen—in the end it was Carus, the name of his hawk—and several minutes after that to translate the message. It says:

_Palace fell before dawn the night you left. Jaha rules city now, Murphy righthand man. Most of us still alive._

Instead of victorious, Bellamy only feels irritated. Nearly a month had passed since they had fled from Polis, and this was the news Miller chose to send? Stomping from the cabin, he finds Kane on a trip back from the mountain tarn that served as their source of water and shoves the note into his hand.

“He didn’t tell us anything new,” he growls, when Kane has had a chance to read it. “We could’ve guessed that ourselves.”

“Now you know he’s alive,” Kane tells him gently. “And was able to get to Carus to send you a note, which must mean he’s able to move around with relative freedom.”

“He shouldn’t be risking himself to send me useless information,” Bellamy grumbles. His irritation, he knows, isn’t directed at Miller but at himself; at his forced removal from his city, at his inability to do anything useful, tucked away in an invisible mountain village.

“I’m sure his next message will tell you more,” Kane says soothingly.

But they don’t hear from Miller for months. Winter closes in less than a week later, and in the valley it arrives with a howling blizzard, snow falling so thick and fast that visibility is reduced to nothing and everyone is confined to their huts to avoid getting lost in the storm. For three days, Bellamy and Kane huddle by the fire in their small hut, eventually burning parchment and books to keep the flames fed and the air warm. The lanterns burn out on the first day, leaving the fire as the only source of light; when that dies out late on the second day, they are left in the dark.

When the storm finally blows itself out, the silence it leaves behind is almost ringing in the wake of the howling wind. They open the front door to their hut to be greeted with several feet of snow that had been hard-packed into a wall.

Days are spent clearing paths through the streets and then another storm hits, and soon Bellamy learns that this is what winter is like in the mountains: brief moments of stillness and glittering beauty interrupted by frequent bouts of gnashing winds and falling snow like shards of glass. After that first storm, they learn to stockpile firewood in a corner of the cabin, to collect buckets of snowmelt in another corner, and to hang smoked meat from the rafters; they keep extra candles and lanterns on the table and by their bedsides so that they won’t be trapped in the dark again.

On the long days when they’re trapped inside with no one else for company, sometimes they plan; they talk of leaving the mountains once the snow melts with Indra’s people as an army and taking back the throne. Bellamy knows Kane is humouring him, that it won’t be so easy as all that, but talk of doing _something_ keeps him sane.

Mostly, though, they stay quiet, choosing to lose themselves in the few books they were given by Indra, reading the same stories over and over again. Frequently, he pulls the drawing of Clarke out of his pocket, just to look at her face; the parchment has become soft with how many times he’s run his fingers over it, the charcoal lines of her face fading from black to grey.

He thinks about her constantly, wondering how she’s doing. She should have reached the sea a month or two after leaving the palace; from what Lincoln had told him, he knew that Luna was a peaceful soul and offered safety and refuge to those who needed it, as long as they followed her way. Surely they would be safe there.

Winter in the mountains seem unending. The ferocious storms come less and less often, and eventually dwindle altogether; spring sunshine reaches between the mountain peaks, sharp and cold. The nights are still long, and temperatures frequently stay below freezing. Even weeks after the last blizzard, the pass out of the valley remains filled with ice and snow, making any journey out of the mountains impossible.

He waits, his impatience mounting with each day that they remain trapped, and mere hours after Indra gives the all-clear he has his horse saddled and ready to go.

“You still insist on doing this, Bellamy?” Kane asks with a sigh. When he nods firmly, Kane says, “Then you’re not going alone. I’m coming with you.”

He doesn’t bother arguing, only waits impatiently as Kane saddles his own horse. They wear thick furs, cloaks with the hoods pulled up, and both have let both their hair and beards grow out over the winter; he thinks the chance of anyone recognizing them for who they are is slim. Especially because he doesn’t plan on going anywhere near Polis, at least not yet; first he needs to visit some of the smaller villages where Jaha’s rule is not so absolute, and see what he can learn.

They take two of the scouts with them, as well as packs filled with weeks worth of rations. It takes longer leaving the mountains than it had coming in—the snow is still deep in places, hiding the path entirely, and the ground is frozen and icy, causing the horses to step with care. A week has passed before they step out onto the North Road, heading south towards Polis, before turning east.

Something dark and mocking settles inside of him when they come across the first village. He probably shouldn’t be surprised; Harper had described, all those months ago, what Jaha’s army had done to the villages when passing through.

It had been burned to the ground. Colour had been sapped entirely from the village—there is only snow, gathered in places that are in perpetual shade, grey with ash, and the burned remains of the buildings, charcoal black. Desolate, and lifeless—

Not lifeless, he realizes as they ride down what had once been the main street. Not quite; faces peek out from behind shattered shutters, around crumbling corners. The few people that are out scurry across the scarred streets, their fear evident in their quick and hurried steps. Glances that are thrown towards the newcomers are brief, frightened, before the townspeople bow their heads and continue on their way.

“Excuse me,” he says, holding out a hand to stop a woman who was trying to cross the street in front of them, a basket on her hip. Slowly, the woman raises her eyes to his. Her hands are trembling, he notices, the basket threatening to shake right out of her grasp. “We mean no harm,” he adds hastily, trying to sound soothing. “We wish only to know what happened here.”

“Surely you know,” the woman gasps out. Her voice is breathy, timid. “We were told that none had been spared.”

“Spared from what?”

The woman’s eyes turn suspicious, and when she speaks it’s with a careful, precise tone. “The good King Jaha took all of our nightbloods with him back to Polis, for their safety. He also invited anyone who wished to join him in the city, where he would provide them with work and food through the winter. The fires were started by rebels who wish to remove the good king from the throne; he had no choice but to put an end to them.” The words have an odd cadence to them, like they’ve been memorized.

She thinks they work for Jaha, he realizes. It would be impossible to get her to trust them enough to tell them the truth.

“Thank you,” he says, nodding his head at her. “That’s all we needed to know.” She hurriedly curtsies to him before hitching her basket back up on her hip and disappearing around a corner.

“Does that answer your questions, Bellamy?” Kane asks him quietly when they’ve left the deathly silent village behind. “If you were hoping to raise the village folk to your banner and march upon Polis, I fear your army will be desperately lacking.”

“It’s not good enough,” Bellamy says stubbornly. “It might not have happened everywhere.”

They visit three more villages, heading first east and then west, and in each they’re greeted with the same sight: burned-out ruins, mostly empty streets, a few villagers going about their tasks with bowed heads and quick feet.

Finally, he’s forced to admit defeat. “Alright, so we won’t be able to get any help from our own people. What about other kingdoms?”

“Like who?” Kane asks. He ticks them off on his fingers. “Arkadia’s army is a fraction of the size of ours, and if we called upon them they would only be destroyed. Moumon has always stayed isolated and refused to enter into any conflicts. We’re far from friendly with Azgeda. And Luterra is on the other side of the Dead Sand; it would take months just to get there, and they’re no allies of ours.”

“What do you suggest, then?”

“I suggest,” Kane says gently, “that we return to Indra’s village, and wait for news. Eventually, it will be safe for us to return to Polis, but I suspect Jaha will have to be taken down from the inside.”

Bellamy doesn’t reply; instead, he digs his heels into his horse’s sides and directs him into the trees, riding far enough away that the others won’t hear him when he screams.

◊◊◊

He does hear from Miller again, several weeks later. The message is short and sickening: _All nightbloods killed._

After that, his messages come at erratic intervals, sometimes months passing between, in which Bellamy does nothing but worry for the safety of his friend and the state of his kingdom.

The messages are usually short, grim and grisly: N _obody allowed to leave or enter Polis,_ or _Jaha had two of his closest advisors executed_ , or _Not enough food; people are starving._

But they always end with the same warning: _Don’t return. Not safe._

The fire that had burned so hotly inside of him dies down, eventually. He suspects it runs out of fuel. His dream of seeing Jaha removed from his throne grows more and more distant, as does his hope of ever seeing his sister or Clarke again.

The village takes root in his heart, a temporary home, and as time passes the word “temporary” falls away. He goes days at a time, sometimes, without thinking of who he had used to be. The future he had Clarke had dreamed up together seems insubstantial; it crumbles to dust beneath his fingertips and he wonders how there had ever been a time he believed it could be real.

He’s dulled his heart to the point that with some of Miller’s messages, he merely glances them over before tossing them in a fire. There are others that tug at something deep inside him, but he refuses to dwell on them; what good does that do? The people who had once been his are dying, their lives stomped out beneath Jaha’s boot heel, and there’s nothing he can do to prevent it.

So he lets life in the village consume him. He becomes apprentice to the blacksmith because he finds he likes making things with his hands, likes the sound of hammer on metal as he bends it into shape, the way it hisses when dunked in water or oil, likes the sweat that rolls down his body from standing near the forges. The blacksmith is an unusually chatty man and he talks almost constantly as they work, telling unimportant stories that serve no purpose but to pass the time. Half the time he drowns him out, taking comfort in the rise and fall of the man’s rambling words.

In spring, they plant crops in the valley, and in fall they harvest them. In summer they hunt and forage and on the hottest days swim in the icy lake, and in winter they huddle inside their huts and wait for the storms to pass. It’s a simple, rhythmic way of life, one that pulls him passively along like an ocean tide. He finds peace in it, and joy sometimes, but deep in his heart he knows that he’s not truly living. He’s only waiting.

He waits as spring becomes summer becomes autumn becomes winter; as the trees sprout leaves which then wither and die and fall. He waits through howling blizzards and lashing rain, through mellow sunshine and heat that threatens to melt the skin from his back.

For three years, he waits.

◊◊◊

_Jaha has fallen._ The message, written in Miller’s familiar cipher, arrives on a warm day in midsummer. Nothing else aside from those three words is written on the scrap of parchment; nothing on how, after nearly three long years, the war had finally been won. No indication of who, aside from Miller himself, had lived and who had died.

He shows the note to Kane who throws his arms around him, tears of relief leaking from his eyes. Bellamy returns the embrace, but sheds no tears; he feels hollow, disbelieving.

Three days later another message arrives, slightly more detailed but not by much. _War is over. Safe to return. Meet us in the north woods as soon as you can._ Surprisingly, the note ends with a sentiment unlike Miller: _I look forward to seeing you, my king._

He and Kane—along with the four scouts who are now old enough to be knighted, once they return to the city—leave as soon as they can. Indra gifts them with food for the road and an invitation to return, should they ever need to. “If you ever _need_ to, mind,” she says in her sharp fashion. “I won’t be having my village become stomping grounds for any king who just needs to clear his head.”

Kane laughs and gives her a one-armed hug, which she awkwardly returns. “Thank you for your kindness and hospitality these last years,” he tells her. “We can never thank you enough.”

They ride for a week, following first the path out of the mountains that had brought them to Indra nearly three years before, and then following the hard-packed dirt of the North Road. They’re still a day away from Polis when two silhouettes appear on the road in front of them, waiting.

The first is Miller, with several days of unshaven beard and a long cut on his face that stretches from his temple to the corner of his mouth.

Next to him is Murphy, his hair longer than the last time Bellamy had seen him, also with a beard, the skin on his face mottled and broken with numerous bruises and scrapes.

“Wait,” Miller says as Bellamy turns his horse towards Murphy, his intention clear on his face. “Murphy’s back on our side. We couldn’t have taken down Jaha without him.”

“You wouldn’t have _had_ to take down Jaha without him,” Bellamy growls.

“Not true,” Murphy says, holding up his hands in defense. “Jaha was planning on marching on Polis long before I joined him.”

“You _knew_ this and yet—”

“ _Wait_ ,” Miller repeats, guiding his horse between Murphy and Bellamy. “I’ve already pardoned Murphy for his crimes.” His gaze is challenging, reminding Bellamy that he’s no longer king and that is no longer his decision to make.

“Fine,” Bellamy grinds out through gritted teeth. “But you better have a good explanation.”

“I’ll explain everything on our way to meet the others. There’s a lot you need to catch up on.” Suddenly Miller grins. “It _is_ good to see you again, Your Majesty.”

“I’m not your king,” Bellamy reminds him.

“You will be soon,” Miller replies cryptically.

Miller leads them off the road and into the trees, riding between Bellamy and Kane in order to fill them in.

“Jaha threw us in the cells as soon as he took control of the Palace,” Miller begins. “Left us down there for a week while deciding what to do with us.”

It had been Murphy who had convinced Jaha that they would be of more use to him alive; to make them swear an oath of obedience and reinstate them to the knightguard, although, of course, none of them were allowed anywhere near Jaha; instead they were sent out to the streets to do the same sort of things Jaha had asked them to do when he’d been king previously.

Miller falters when it comes to talking about the horrors he’d had to commit, and Bellamy gently assures him, “It’s alright.” The vague, erratic updates from Miller had been more than enough. Neither of them needed to relive that.

For two and a half years, Jaha ruled with an iron fist. “You coming back wouldn’t have helped anything, Your Majesty,” Miller says, the title rolling unconsciously off his tongue. “Jaha was beyond paranoid—triple guards on every gate and in the street at all times, no one allowed in or out of the city unless they had signed and sealed permission from himself or one of his advisors; he had every meal checked for poison and slept with two people guarding his bed. It would have taken an army larger than any we’ve ever seen—including the one he stormed Polis with—to take him down from the outside.”

Bellamy only grits his teeth. Knowing that there had been nothing he could do—knowing that he would have died if he’d tried—does nothing to alleviate the restless irritation he feels at having lived peacefully in the mountains while his people had suffered at the hands of a despot.

“He killed all of the nightbloods,” Miller says quietly, his voice as thin and crumpled as old parchment. “All of the registered ones, anyway, who hadn’t managed to get away. But he didn’t stop there. Anyone who had been related to a nightblood, or had helped hide one away, they died too; and then it was anyone who was believed to be associated with them, and then anyone who spoke poorly of him. He came to believe that everyone was plotting against him, and the smallest wrong step could get you thrown in jail, or with a noose around your neck—”

He pauses, but only to breathe. The words spill out of him, an avalanche of stones, sharp and cutting for all that they’re spoken softly. “Sterling and Monroe were killed early on, along with dozens of others. The head cook, the stablehand, nearly half of the knights…Harper and I survived, by pure luck I’m relatively certain—I was almost caught a handful of times heading up to the tower to send you a message. And there were thousands of us who wanted to remove him, but to speak of it would be to risk death, and to actually attempt it would be to welcome it for sure—so everyone lived inside of their heads, afraid to say a thing, afraid to even _look_ at each other, for fear of what could happen—”

His voice trails off. He’s breathing heavily, like he’s just run a race, and Bellamy reaches across the space between them to lay a comforting hand on his arm.

“Thank you,” he murmurs, “for staying behind when you could have escaped with us. What you did—what you’ve been through—I know it hasn’t been easy—” Words fail him.

Miller only nods jerkily, his gaze focused on the path ahead. “Anyway,” he says, voice sounding almost normal, “in the end, it was Murphy who saved us. Jaha trusted him; one of the few people he did trust. Murphy claims he had been ready to turn on Jaha since near the beginning, but because of Jaha’s paranoia—and his treatment of those who betrayed him—he had to step carefully. He caught me sending a message to you one day—recognized Carus as yours; I thought he was going to kill me, but instead he told me that he could bring me Jaha.

“He was true to his word. Next time he was on guard duty over Jaha, he slipped something into his wine and brought him to me, bound and gagged. We announced to the city that Jaha had fallen, and understandably there were riots—people who were still on Jaha’s side and wanted to free him, people who wanted him to die by their hand. It took several days to get everything under control, but now here we are.”

“Where is Jaha now?” Bellamy asks when Miller finishes his story.

“We have him.”

“And what of Sydney? I’m sure he kept her close.”

Miller’s jaw tightens. “She ran,” he says. “ _Again_ —that woman must have her ear to the floor. She vanished without a trace the same day we took Jaha, and we never found her.”

“So be it,” Bellamy mutters.

For a couple of minutes they’re silent as they ride through the trees. And then, “We’re here,” Miller says, spreading his arms to take in all that’s in front of them.

His jaw drops. In the valley between two hills, amongst the bushes and trees, are thousands of people. Many are sitting in tightknit groups, some tending fires or preparing meals. The only space in the entire area that’s clear of people is that immediately surrounding a tree towards the edge of the makeshift camp, and it doesn’t take long for him to figure out why.

Tied tightly to the tree, hands and legs bound, mouth gagged, head drooping, clothes ragged, face bloody, is Jaha. Several people are standing guard over him, although standing a safe distance away, weapons held half-raised.

He doesn’t look a tyrant, a murderer, a king. He looks a tired old man who just wishes to rest.

From his belt, Miller pulls a horn and blows it. The sound echoes through the trees and everyone turns expectantly towards its source. Upon seeing Bellamy and Kane at Miller’s side, alive and mostly well, many hold a hand to their heart, or bow their heads, or simply fall to their knees.

“I return with your king!” Miller shouts to the gathered masses.

“I told you,” Bellamy hisses, “I am king no longer.”

“To these people, you are,” Miller murmurs, and as if to punctuate his point, the crowd begins chanting his name: “ _King Bell-a-my…King Bell-a-my…_ ” Most of the crowd is on its knees now, bowed towards him in subservience.

“They _want_ you as king.”

“But why? I did nothing for them—I brought war and ruin upon them—”

“On the contrary, Your Majesty, you did more for them than any other king they’ve ever known. They know you’ll fight for them. And after all they’ve been through—they’d rather have a king they know then one they don’t.”

“Is that what _you_ want?” Kane asks him, softly.

He’s not sure. He had spent three years living in obscurity, being not a king but a simple man; and now these people would thrust a crown upon him, when the kingdom lies in ruins and the process of building it back up promises to be far from easy.

But it is _his_ kingdom; he was born to it and he had ruled it, and he would do everything he could to protect it. That was his duty. That was his choice.

“Yes,” he says.

Leading the way, he rides down the hill towards his people, who open up a path for him. Once among them, he cries, “I will be your king, if you will have me.”

A cheer goes up in response, washing over him like ocean waves warmed by the sun.

He could not truly be king until they returned to the palace, to the crown and the throne, but he can act as king and there is one pressing matter that needs to be taken care of. Something he would have done five years ago, if he had known then when he knows now.

He rides towards the tree where Jaha is chained, halting a few feet away. Jaha meets his cold stare; his eyes are burning.

“Thelonius Jaha,” Bellamy proclaims, “as the rightful king of Polis, I hereby sentence you to death.”

◊◊◊

In the end, it’s over quickly. Despite the fear and hopelessness and helplessness, the destruction and desolation and deaths he had caused, in the end Jaha is just a man, and he goes quietly.

Bellamy performs the execution himself. Jaha is laid out prone before him, his neck supported by a hastily cut log, his hands and feet still bound. His sword is drawn from his sheath with a rasp that shivers through the trees and it comes down in a graceful arc that neatly separates Jaha’s head from his shoulders.

Afterwards he walks away, leaving others to dispose of the body, and finds a quiet spot in the woods where he can clean the blood from his blade and breathe in silence.

No one comes to find him, perhaps understanding why he needs this brief moment of peace, and it’s not until nightfall that he makes his way back to the others.

They camp one last time under the stars, and in the morning depart to return to Polis. Kane and Miller ride with him and the front of the long column that winds through the hills, Murphy just behind them, Harper watching over him carefully. Bellamy had demoted him from the knightguard and considered banishing him altogether; in the end, at Miller’s urging, he had allowed Murphy to return to the city, although he would no longer be welcome in the palace.

They march for hours under an overcast sky, and with every step that takes him closer to his home he feels a thrill like lightning travel through his veins.

“My Majesty, wait.” Miller’s hand on his arm forestalls him just before they reach the last hill that stands between them and their destination. “Before you see for yourself, there’s one more thing.” He takes a deep breath, bracing himself, before saying, “Polis as you knew it is gone.”

Bellamy can only blink at him, uncomprehending. “What do you mean, gone?”

“I mean, it all burned. There was a lot of fighting when we took out Jaha—people still supporting him, people who wanted him dead right there. Sparks flew, and the whole city went up in flames.”

“All of it?” His voice is like the smoke of an extinguished flame, thin and wavering.

Miller only nods.

“Maybe that’s for the best,” he says after a moment. The last three years—and the decades of Jaha’s rule before that, although they hadn’t been so bloody—had left Polis full of ghosts and demons, haunted by the evils that had taken place there. “Maybe we need to start again.”

He nods to himself, forces a semblance of a smile on his face, and heels his horse up the hill.

They reach the rise, and he looks down into the ruins of his city, the ruins of what had been. His breath catches in his throat.

Silence like the grave. Nothing moves in the remains of a once-vibrant city that had been reduced to shades of grey. How many thousands had died here? How many had tried to withstand the hotly burning fires of war that had come raging through, and been destroyed?

The palace can be seen shimmering in the distance, rising up from the centre of the city. He can’t make out details, whether the marble is still white or charred black, whether it’s been burned from the inside out and is now only a husk, but it stands. It stands.

“Let’s go,” he tells his people, and they form up into a line behind him.

Below, a burned out city welcomes him home. Above, a black bird circles lazily in a sky like ashes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're officially at the halfway point of this monster! What did you think of Bellamy's story? Let me know in the comments!
> 
> Part 1 of "After" will be published next Friday, as usual.
> 
> Find me on tumblr: forgivenessishardforus


	6. After: queen of starlight and sand (pt 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The news about Bellamy wasn’t the only thing I heard. There was something else, about—” Lincoln closes his eyes, takes a breath, and she feels something cold and slimy uncoil in her stomach, slither up through her ribcage, coil around her heart and squeeze.
> 
> “Tell me.” 
> 
> “Arkadia has fallen,” he says, voice rushed and quiet, eyes closed against seeing their impact on her. “Attacked by Azgeda a month ago, perhaps two. Your mother is missing, presumed dead. The Queen of Azgeda sits on her throne.” 
> 
> The snake around her heart releases her, and she feels like she is falling. The world goes black around her, briefly; when she opens her eyes she’s sitting on the mossy floor of the forest and Lincoln is beside her, arm wrapped comfortingly around her shoulders.
> 
> “I have to go back,” she says, although the words sound faint in her own ears they ring with certainty. Her heart breaks a little, for the home in Polis she can’t return to, for Bellamy and their life together that will have to wait, but she is Princess of Arkadia and that will always be her first and foremost duty.
> 
> Queen of Arkadia, now, she corrects herself, and shies away from the thought. No. Her mother isn’t dead. Might not be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time for a new perspective, new places, new people! If you haven't read the prologue in a while, you might want to go back and do that now.
> 
> PS: All my ship terminology comes from books and a week I spent in a sailboat once. I didn't bother doing research so hopefully I didn't get anything horribly wrong.

“The news about Bellamy wasn’t the only thing I heard. There was something else, about—” Lincoln closes his eyes, takes a breath, and she feels something cold and slimy uncoil in her stomach, slither up through her ribcage, coil around her heart and squeeze.

“Tell me.”

“Arkadia has fallen,” he says, voice rushed and quiet, eyes closed against seeing their impact on her. “Attacked by Azgeda a month ago, perhaps two. Your mother is missing, presumed dead. The Queen of Azgeda sits on her throne.”

The snake around her heart releases her, and she feels like she is falling. The world goes black around her, briefly; when she opens her eyes she’s sitting on the mossy floor of the forest and Lincoln is beside her, arm wrapped comfortingly around her shoulders.

“I have to go back,” she says, although the words sound faint in her own ears they ring with certainty. Her heart breaks a little, for the home in Polis she can’t return to, for Bellamy and their life together that will have to wait, but she is Princess of Arkadia and that will always be her first and foremost duty.

 _Queen of Arkadia, now_ , she corrects herself, and shies away from the thought. No. Her mother isn’t dead. Might not be.

Lincoln only nods. “I’d come with you if I could, but—”

“You need to return to Polis, with Octavia. It’s where you belong. I understand.” Her heart twists; it was where _she_ belonged, as well.

But duty surpasses desire, always, so she rises with a sigh and dusts off her hands. “I’m sure everyone is eager to be on their way home.”

“You’re not coming with us?” Octavia screeches when they tell her the news, loudly enough that several people turn their heads. “Clarke—”

“My kingdom comes first,” she says. “It’s my duty as princess—now queen, I suppose.”

“Queen?” Raven walks up beside her, eyes bright with curiosity. “Queen of what? And did she just call you Clarke?”

Clarke sighs; Raven had ears like a bat. “Queen of Arkadia,” she says. “My true name is Clarke Griffin.”

Surprise flickers across Raven’s face for a fraction of a second, before she breaks into a beaming smile. “You’re a _queen_? Gods, no wonder you’re so demanding sometimes.”

“Princess, technically,” Clarke corrects her, not even bothering to appear hurt at the slight. “I’m only queen if my mother truly is dead—” her heart cracks at the thought—“and I’ve yet to be crowned.”

Raven blinks at her a couple of times, her face expressionless.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Clarke rushes to apologize. “We decided it was best not to let anyone know, in case Jaha came looking for us. As Octavia is King Bellamy’s brother, and I’m his betrothed—”

“Betrothed to the king of Polis?” Raven shakes her head in wonder. “What else have you been hiding from me?”

Clarke opens her mouth to respond, but nothing comes out; the truthful answer would be _everything;_ although they had known each other nearly three years, Raven knew very little about her past. Seeing the guilty look on her face, Raven only laughs and taps her comfortingly on the shoulder. “I’m just kidding, Clara—Clarke. We all have secrets, and we all have our reasons for keeping them so. What do you mean, ‘if my mother truly is dead’? What did you hear?”

“Lincoln heard news that Arkadia has fallen to Azgeda,” Clarke says somberly. “My mother is missing, and Queen Nia has taken her throne. It’s why I ride there, instead of to Polis. I need to reclaim what is mine.”

Raven nods thoughtfully. “I’m coming with you,” she says, after hardly a moment’s pause. “I’m sure others will want to, as well.” When Clarke gapes at her, she adds, “A lot of us don’t have homes to go home to, Clar—Clarke. They all burned, and it will take years of rebuilding. And people like you here, look up to you. They’ll want to support you.”

“I would’ve thought they’ve had enough war for a lifetime.”

“For some, I’m sure that’s true. For people like me—” Raven gives her that toothy grin again—“I’m far too curious to let you go alone. You truly are betrothed to the king?” At Clarke’s affirming nod, she whistles. “I’m impressed—and full of questions. Good thing there’ll be plenty of time for you to tell me the full story on the way to Arkadia.”

She’s known Raven for nearly three years, and she _knows_ that spark in her eye, the one that says she has an idea between her teeth and won’t let it go no matter how one pleaded or wheedled. And to be honest, if she wants to come, Clarke won’t try to stop her. She needs all the help she can get.

Instead, she returns Raven’s grin. “I’ll be glad for your company,” she admits. “And your skill with the bow.” Despite having no formal training, Raven was one of the best archers she’d ever seen. “Do you truly think others will want to come with us?”

 

“I guarantee it,” Raven declares. “I’m not the only one with a penchant for action and no home to return to. I’ll find you an army.”

In the end, Raven convinces just a couple dozen people to march with them for Arkadia. Hardly the army she had promised, but Clarke is grateful just the same. Raven has told them all the truth about her, and some look at her with awe, others with determination. Some carry weapons, ranging from Raven’s quiver and bow to curved hunting knives, while others carry little more than their bundle of clothes.

“We need to get going,” Lincoln says, once they’ve split into two groups. He’s delayed leaving for Polis, because of her. “Do you have a message you’d like me to take to Bellamy?” His voice is gentle, concerned.

Her mind goes blank at the thought. Frequently she had dreamed of seeing Bellamy again, of course, but always in an abstract, wishing sort of way, never in concrete terms. What was there to say to a man she hadn’t seen in three years, who had lost and won a war without her?

That they had changed in their time apart is an inescapable fact, one that makes her tremble. Who knew what kind of man he had become? A hard one, one who had forgotten her—

“Give him my congratulations,” she says formally, “on taking back the throne, and my regret that I’m unable to return. On behalf of Arkadia and our nations’ good standing, I request his assistance in driving Azgeda from Arkadia.”

Lincoln’s eyebrows raise. “That’s all? Clarke, I’m sure he wishes to hear something more personal from you.”

“It’s been three years,” she tells him. “Who knows what Bellamy wishes?” Lincoln sets his jaw stubbornly, and she sighs. “Fine,” she concedes. “If he asks—only _if_ , mind—you can tell him that I’ve missed him. And that I wish I could return to my true home.”

“I’m sure he’ll ask,” Lincoln assures her. “The king loves you, Clarke, deeply and entirely. That kind of love doesn’t just vanish because of something as small as a war.” He glances to Octavia as he talks and Clarke snorts, both because of his poor attempt at humour and his obvious and consuming love for Bellamy’s sister.

She throws her arms around him, embracing him tightly. “Thank you,” she murmurs into his shoulder. “For _everything_ —for getting us out of Polis and keeping us safe. No doubt I owe you my life.”

His arms go around her, squeezing so tightly that the air gusts out of her lungs. “Anything for you and Octavia,” he murmurs into her hair.

She smiles at that. Of course, Lincoln would still make it out to be that it had only been about them, when the truth was that he had spent _months_ when the war had first started shepherding nightbloods to safety. He had saved dozens of lives but if anyone asked him about it, he would only say that he could have saved more.

“You’re one of the best men I’ve ever known,” she tells him, meaning it with her entire soul.

He pulls away from her, a soft smile on his face. “We’ll see each other again soon, Clarke. No need to treat this like it’s forever.”

“Just in case,” she says. “I know I don’t need to tell you this, but take care of Octavia. And travel safely.”

“Like I need him to take care of me,” Octavia scoffs. She’s grown harder in their years away from the palace, all muscle and sinew. She wears a sword across her back now, and knows how to use it.

Clarke smiles at her. “Then you take care of him,” she says. “Take care of each other.” She pulls the other girl into a hug, releasing her only when Octavia begins to squirm.

She watches as the people bound for Polis depart, then turns towards her own ragtag army. Raven stands at the forefront, Jasper and Monty at her side. Those three, especially, had been her friends while living here, and she feels a rush of affection knowing that they march with her now. The others she knows by name but they’re acquaintances at best, people who have joined her because, as Raven said, they have nowhere else to go.

If she were someone else, perhaps she would try to dissuade them, tell them that it would be a long and gruelling journey, an uphill battle that they had every possibility of losing; that, homeless or not, they would be safer in Polis. But the hard truth of the matter is that she needs them, she needs every single person she can get her hands on if she has any hope of taking back her mother’s throne.

So instead of giving a fancy speech—Bellamy had always been better at those, anyway—she simply announces, “We march for Arkadia.”

◊◊◊

They head south instead of east, towards a port town Luna directed them to, where she said they could possibly find a boat that would take them up the coast. “If you can’t pay with coin, some will allow you to pay with labour,” she’d told them.

“I have coin,” Clarke had said, feeling self-conscious when everyone stared at the handfuls she pulled out of her bag. A sharp reminder that most everyone here had come from lives of poverty, and were only joining her because they didn’t have a home to return to.

They can smell the sea before they see it, a sharp brine scent that carries on the breeze. Squawking gulls circle on thermals above the tiny port town, and at midafternoon, the streets are bustling. Clarke leads them through the town towards the docks.

There are a handful of ships currently at port. Several are only fishing boats, but there is one cargo ship, more than large enough to take on all of them. She finds the captain standing on the dock, watching as the sailors load cargo into the holds.

“Pardon me,” she asks as she approaches him. “Do you mind telling me where you’re headed?”

“Port Wasin,” he grunts at her, not even bothering to look her way. “Polis is in desperate need of supplies, after what they’ve been through.”

Port Wasin, she knows, is near the southernmost tip of Polis, only a couple hundred miles from the Arkadian border. Her heart speeds up with excitement.

“I’d like you to take us there,” she says. “We can pay.”

“This isn’t a passenger ship.”

“You can make it one.”

For the first time he looks at her, his bushy eyebrows raised to his hairline. “And why would I do that?”

She considers telling him who she really is, if only to get him to take her seriously. But she has no proof of her status, and her mother had taught her from a young age not to wave her nobility under people’s noses. So she says, “Because I can pay you,” and pulls out a handful of gold coins.

The captain’s watery blue eyes go wide at the sight. He visibly licks his lips before turning his attention back to her.

“How many people do you want me to carry?”

“Twenty-six.”

“Twenty-six!” he explodes incredulously. “I’ve nowhere near the room for that many. I’d have to offload cargo just to fit you on board.”

“Then offload cargo,” she says calmly. “I’ll pay you the difference. More than.” She pours more coin into her hands. For the first time, she’s relieved at the ridiculous amount of coin her mother had left her with before returning to Arkadia. She hadn’t needed to spend it while she was in Polis, and had spent very little on their original flight to the sea; it seemed now it would finally be useful.

“It’s impossible,” he says, but she can tell he’s beginning to waver.

“I’ll pay you ten gold coins per head and pay you back for the cargo you offload, plus another fifty percent besides. We can work for you, too.” When he continues to hesitate she adds, “You won’t ever get the chance to make this much money again, Captain. Take the deal.”

She can see the exact moment when his greed wins out over his reservations; he sighs and nods once.

“Alright, fine,” he grumbles. “But you’ll have to sleep in the cargo hold. I have plans to leave within the hour—you all best be ready by then, or I’ll leave you behind.”

“Thank you,” she tells him. “Captain—?”

He sees her proffered hand, and shakes it with a sigh to seal their deal. “Gimanji,” he says.

“My name is Clara Kane,” she tells him. “We’ll be ready when you depart.”

She’s smiling as she makes her way back to Raven and the others, but Raven only looks worried.

“What is it?” she asks. “I got us a ship. This will cut down on our travel time by over a month.”

“I know you’re a princess and everything,” Raven says, keeping her voice pitched low, “but it’s generally not a good idea to show off your wealth. Especially in towns like this.”

“If I hadn’t, he never would have let us on his ship.”

Raven shrugs. “Even so. Be careful. He might try to rob you.”

Clarke grins at her ferally, lifting up her skirts just enough for Raven to see the bone handle dagger she keeps strapped to her calf. “I’d like to see him try.”

◊◊◊

The last—and first—time she’d been on a boat had been three years ago, when she had escaped Polis with Lincoln and Octavia. Events of that night were foggy in her memory, now—she remembers the dancing flames of the torches off the tunnel walls, the quiet of the streets as they’d slipped around corners, sticking to shadows, and climbing aboard a small boat that bobbed in the waters of the Erye River, after Lincoln had exchanged a few words with the man that sat in the prow.

She didn’t remember the details of the night, but she remembers every moment of the excruciating two week journey down the river. Almost immediately, the rocking of the boat in the water had caused her stomach to revolt, and she’d spent the first couple hours of the journey west leaning over the side, vomiting into the river. After that, she had spent most of her time in the small cabin, curled up on the narrow shelf that served as her bed, willing the hours to pass faster.

Being on a ship out at sea was not the same as being on a boat on a river.

It was much, much worse.

Oh, the ship rocked less—it was large and weighted down with its cargo enough that the waves seemed to go around it, instead of carrying it with them. She thinks that might be part of the problem; when she stands on the deck and looked out at the endless sea—nothing but water, as far as the eye can see, in every direction—she expects to feel the ship moving, and doesn’t. Large waves slap against the hull, spraying her with cool seawater, and the boat hardly shifts in response.

Her stomach twists, and she swallows hard.

“Not one for the sea?” Raven asks, coming up beside her.

Clarke shakes her head vehemently. “I’m a daughter of sand,” she says. “There’s little to be had of water in Arkadia. What about you?”

“I’ve never sailed before,” Raven says with a shrug, “but I’ve never much ran into anything I’m not good at.” She laughs when Clarke glares at her. “Water’s not for everyone,” she says consoling. “Jasper’s also looking a little green around the gills.”

She looks in the direction Raven tilts her head, and sees Jasper curled up at the base of the mainmast, Monty crouched beside him. It makes her feel better, marginally.

“How long did the captain say the journey would be?”

“A little less than three weeks, if the weather’s good.”

Clarke groans. “And _why_ did I agree to traveling by sea rather than over land?”

“Because it cuts a month off of our travel time,” Raven reminds her. “I’m sure the discomfort will be worth it.”

“Easy for you to say,” Clarke retorts, glaring at her. “ _Your_ stomach doesn’t feel like it’s trying to climb outside of your body.”

Raven wraps a comforting arm around her shoulders. “Come on,” she says. “Maybe you’ll feel better if we go below deck.”

Raven leads her to the cargo hold, where a space has been cleared for their party to make their temporary home. Most of the others are already down there, unpacking bedrolls or relaxing against their bags; someone has pulled out a cup of dice and a handful are sitting in a circle, playing a game.

The air smells stale, of must and mold, and it’s mostly dark, aside from a couple of lanterns that flicker gloomily in the corners. The wooden boards creak beneath her feet, and are slightly damp when she sits down. Despite the thoroughly depressing mood to the place, she finds that Raven’s right; she does feel better with the ocean waves out of sight. Down here, the rocking of the boat is almost imperceptible.

She takes several deep breaths—the air sticks to her tongue and only seems to half-fill her lungs—until her stomach stops doing backflips. Raven disappears back up the hatch and returns a couple minutes later with Monty, who half-drags a semi-conscious Jasper down the ladder.

“This is the worst idea I’ve ever had,” Jasper moans, collapsing into a heap at the bottom of the ladder. “And I’ve had plenty of bad ideas.”

Monty chuckles. “Jasper’s afraid of water,” he confides to Clarke. “He refused to even learn how to swim.”

“I don’t know how to swim, either,” she tells him. When his eyebrows raise in surprise, she adds, “Most of Arkadia is in a desert. Our rivers are narrow and shallow, the water usually muddy. Not ideal for learning how to swim.”

“So what do you think of the sea?” he asks.

“It’s overwhelming,” she admits. “I’d known the seas were big, of course, I’ve studied maps, but I never imagined it would disappear over the side of the world, that you could ever truly be out of sight of land. The only thing I can compare it to is the night sky over the desert, but you can’t drown in that.”

“Would you mind telling us more about Arkadia?” Monty asks, and Raven chimes in with, “Yes, please do!”

A number of the others have turned towards her in interest, and even Jasper raises his head from the cradle of his arms so he can watch her. “I can try,” she says. “But I don’t know where to start…”

In the end, she starts by telling them about the desert, which none of them have seen: she tells them of the rolling dunes of sand, some as high as hills; how the sand is white in sunlight, but changes colour with sunset, sometimes reflecting rose and lavender and gold. “Some say the desert is colourless,” she says, “but those people have never lived there, because if they had, they’d know the desert is full of infinite colours, subtle shades—”

Her fingers itch for her oil paints. She hadn’t painted in years, not since before she had come to Polis, but back in Arkadia it had calmed her. She had painted the desert before, many times, and in every painting it looked different. That was something people didn’t understand: how the desert shifted with the wind, the sun, the season; it was never the same place twice.

“And the stars,” she continues, “nowhere else can you see so many. There’s a reason Arkadia is called ‘Land of a Thousand Stars,’ although a thousand doesn’t even begin to describe it. They’re so numerous you couldn’t count them even if you spent every moment of the rest of your life doing so. Light so sharp you can almost feel it where it touches your skin…”

“Do you miss it?” Monty asks her quietly.

She blinks, considers before answering. Arkadia had never truly felt her home, not since her father had died, and she had thought about it less and less frequently since leaving. Polis had become her home, _Bellamy_ had become her home, but—

There is a part of her soul that will always belong to starlight and sand, and she knows that. The sound of the wind across the desert dunes is written into her bones, the colours of sunlight and shadows painted into her skin.

“Sometimes,” she answers at last. “But only in the way you miss a memory, something that doesn’t mean as much to you now as it once did, but you still miss it for the meaning it used to have. My home is in Polis now, with Bellamy.”

“Tell us about the king,” Raven urges, the spark in her eye telling Clarke that she’d been dying to ask this question for days.

Clarke sighs and is trying to figure out how best to answer when the hatch opens and early evening light floods in.

“Dinner,” Captain Gimanji tells them in his gruff voice. “We eat in the kitchen.” The hatch slams shut without another word.

Raven groans with mock aggravation. “Just when you were about to get to the good part,” she complains.

“Don’t worry,” Clarke says with a wicked grin, “there will be plenty of time for me to tell you all about Bellamy.” Her heart aches as she says it, for all the memories of him that are already lost to her, for the months that still stand between now and seeing him again.

The kitchen is stiflingly warm, and clearly not large enough to hold the captain and crew, plus twenty-six passengers; the crew sits around the long table, and makes it clear there’s no room for them. They stand against the walls as they eat, listening to the rough chatter of the sailors.

Afterwards, the crew spills out onto the deck, and someone pulls out a flute, and there is singing and dancing. She can still hear the waves, crashing against the side of the ship, but they’re nearly invisible in the night and her stomach stays where it’s supposed to. She declines offers to dance though, not wanting to risk spilling her dinner all over the deck, and instead watches with amusement as her people are pulled into the festivities.

It reminds her of the night she and Bellamy had hosted a feast, how wine had flowed like blood through her veins—red for once, instead of black—and the world had been a kaleidoscope of colours as it whirled around them. She had danced that night, danced until she was breathless, danced until everything else faded away except for the feel of Bellamy in her arms.

It’s late by the time people begin to wind down, a half moon peeking out through gaps in the wispy clouds that stain the sky and lighting a path eastward across the water. A path for them to follow, she thinks; a path to lead her home.

◊◊◊

She’s woken by a rough hand pressed over her mouth and a knife blade pressed to her throat. She can feel the steel, cold and sharp against her throat. In the darkness, it’s impossible to tell the identity of her assailant—she can’t even see his shadow, the darkness is so profound—but when he speaks she recognizes the voice.

“Not a word,” Captain Gimanji growls in her ear. “If you make a sound, so help me—” He presses the blade deeper into her skin to emphasize his point. “Get up. Come with me.”

She does as he asks, not bothering to protest as he pulls her arms roughly behind her back and propels her forward. Her thoughts remain calm, logical.

She had been prepared for an attack like this, if surprised that the captain had chosen to act on their first night out at sea and when she was sleeping amongst twenty-five others. Her dagger dangled down her back, hidden from sight by the fabric of her dress. And she had been trained thoroughly in the art of protecting herself; after all, a princess couldn't always rely on her guard to save her life.

It’s the timing that’s important here. She doesn’t wish to make a scuffle in the cargo hold, where the commotion could wake her people and put them in danger. And while she wishes to thoroughly humiliate the captain for believing he could put a hand on her, she’d prefer to do it somewhere private, so as not to antagonize him towards her further.

So she climbs willingly up the ladder onto the deck, lets him push her through the bodies of the sailors who are sleeping on the wooden boards and into his own cabin, which is illuminated by a lantern.

She doesn’t fight back, not even when he shoves her against the door once it’s closed behind them and keeps the knife hard against her throat.

“I know you’ve got money,” he growls, “and plenty of it. I want it. Tell me where you keep it, and I’ll let you live.”

“No,” she tells him, pleased with how unruffled she sounds.

His eyes widen slightly in confusion, but he only digs the knife deeper into her skin. She can feel the first drops of blood well up around the blade.

“I don’t think you understand—” he begins, and then stops, staring at the blood that drips from beneath the blade and down her pale throat. Staring at the _colour_ of the blood. “You’re a nightblood,” he breathes, voice filled with disgust, and she doesn’t let him get any further before spinning into action.

Taking advantage of his momentary distraction, she grips his wrist in a crushing hold, twisting so that the knife drops from suddenly nerveless fingers. Maintaining her hold on his wrist, she steps away from the door and uses her grip as a pivot, spinning him so that his back slams into the space she’d just vacated.

With her free hand she pulls her dagger from where it hangs at her back and in turn presses it to his neck. The blade is curved, wicked, inches longer than the one he’d held on her.

All within a matter of seconds, the word _nightblood_ still hanging in the air. The captain stares at her, dazed, with more than a hint of fear swimming in his eyes.

“Where are you from, Captain?” she asks, voice pleasant. “The unclaimed lands? Polis?” He gives a slight nod at her second guess and she grins, and sharp and as curved as her blade.

“Then you should know by now that killing nightbloods is no longer rewarded in your homeland. Quite the opposite, actually. In fact, if King Bellamy finds out what you tried to do tonight—” She tilts her head toward him, feels a jolt of pleasure at the stark fear in his face, and can’t help herself: “Maybe I should introduce myself, who I truly am. My name is Clarke Griffin, nightblood Princess of Arkadia and betrothed to King Bellamy of Polis. Goddamn right you should be afraid of me.”

The captain whimpers, a strange sound coming from his large body, and she releases him. He continues to stare at her, rubbing the place on his throat where her blade had been.

“Now,” she continues, “let me set a few things straight. You will take me and my people to Port Wasin with all speed. You will not lay another finger on me or on _anyone_ I command. You will make sure your crew does the same. At the end of the journey, I will pay you exactly what we agreed upon, and not a copper more. And if you should violate my personal space again, I _will_ report you to King Bellamy, and he _will_ take you to trial.”

The captain gulps. “Yes, My Lady,” he almost whispers.

“Now,” she says, tucking the dagger back into his dangling sheath at her neck, ‘no one else ever needs to hear of this altercation, agreed?”

When he nods, she steps out of the way so that he can move. Once the door is clear she flings it open and steps back onto the deck, walking without haste towards the hatch and the cargo hold.

The dark space is filled with the sound of even breathing. She feels her way over to her bags, where she had made her bed, and lies down.

“Clarke?” Raven’s whisper is almost loud in the quiet. “Are you alright?”

“Fine,” she replies, smiling at her friend’s concern. “The captain won’t be bothering me, or any of us, again.”

“Bet you gave him a hell of a surprise,” Raven murmurs sleepily. “But, just in case—let me know if you need me to kick his ass for you.”

“Of course.”

◊◊◊

The journey goes smoothly, after that. The captain is nothing but polite to her and if there’s a hint of fear in his eyes when he speaks to her, she doesn’t mention it. They’re shown by the crew how to do some of the more basic tasks—swabbing the decks, keeping the lines clear, acting the lookout (although neither Clarke nor Jasper can handle the height or the sway of the mast while in the crow’s nest), helping the cook prepare meals. Most days are filled with hours of hard work, and the evenings filled with music and dancing, laughter and song.

After a handful of days, Clarke no longer feels uncomfortable walking across the rolling deck of the boat, or nauseous staring out at the waves. The skies remain clear, the sun hot, the stars bright.

Until the fifteenth day, that is, when they’re nearly three-quarters through the trip. In early afternoon, cumulus clouds begin gathering on the horizon in front of them, a washed out threat against the pale blue of the sky. As the hours pass, the clouds take on striking colours of stark white and charcoal grey, becoming more defined by the minute. Painted onto the heavens, instead of merely sketched there. The air is calm, humid, stifling, ominous in its stillness.

She approached the captain where he stands at the wheel. His stance is loose but his hands, white knuckled around the wood, belie his appearance of ease.

“Why aren’t we going around it?” she asks.

The captain snorts. “You underestimate its size, My Lady,” he replies. “A storm like this, we’d have to go hundreds of miles out of our way to circumvent it. There’s no time, and no use; most storms like this blow themselves out in an hour or two. We’ll just have to wait it out.”

He abandons the wheel briefly to shout orders to his crew, who are working with haste to get the ship storm-ready. Sails are lashed down, portholes closed, hatches sealed. A wind whips up out of nowhere as the storm clouds loom ever closer, strong enough to carry voices away and make every step forward a difficulty. She notices the waves have grown taller, their spray reaching higher than the ship and wetting the deck.

There’s not much they can do except get in the way, so at a curt order from the captain, she retreats with her people back down to the cargo hold. The ship is rocking much more noticeably on the waves than usual, as evidenced by the turning of her stomach and the wild swinging of the lanterns.

And then the storm hits.

Down below, they can’t see it, but they can hear it, and feel it: there’s a crash of thunder that seems to shake the wooden beams, a sudden jolt as an unusually large wave broadsides the ship. The sound of pounding rain, harried shouts, comes muffled through the hatch, not quite quiet enough to be drowned out.

They sit in a huddle, silent, ears craned to catch every noise coming from above, bodies braced against the sudden lurching of the vessel. The air is thick with the smell of fear; she can practically see it rolling off of everyone.

Raven breaks the silence. “Tell us another story, Clarke,” she says. “Tell us of the king.”

“Well…” she hesitates, but others add their eager voices to Raven’s, and she realizes that anything will do to keep their minds off the storm. “My mother brought me to Polis in the spring of three years ago,” she begins, “with the intention of marrying me off to the king…”

She tells them how she had first believed Bellamy to be cold and uncaring, aside from an unlawful king and the murderer of her friend; she describes for them her first weeks at the palace, the crushing loneliness that had swamped her, Octavia’s friendship, her fights with the king.

“He truly called you a spoiled, self-entitled brat?” Raven asks incredulously.

Clarke nods, a smile tugging at her lips. “I deserved it,” she says, “for calling him a murderer and a tyrant practically in the same breath. Besides, he apologized a few hours later.” She still wonders sometimes how long it would have taken for them to see each other straight, had Octavia not been acting as a go-between; they were both prideful, stubborn, unforgiving.

“But what’s he _like_?” a girl, Fox, asks, voice brimming with curiosity. It occurs to Clarke suddenly that to these people, Bellamy had only ever been their distant king, a myth rather than someone who actually existed.

So she asks, “What have you heard of him?”

There’s an uncertain silence, before Jasper pipes up, “I remember when he came to power; my ma cried, she was so relieved. Told me that I wouldn’t have to live in fear, not anymore.”

“We used to talk about him while we played,” a boy named Austin adds. He was the youngest of the bunch, at barely seventeen. “The man who had become king without a drop of noble blood. He gave us hope, you know?”

“I remember what life had been like under Jaha,” Raven says, the oldest of them all. “I was living on the streets, didn’t have a home, and every day I was afraid someone would find out what I was. That I would be dragged off to execution or have my throat slit while I slept. Things changed when King Bellamy came to power. Nightbloods were still being killed, but not nearly as frequently. If Jaha had stayed in power much longer, I’m sure I wouldn’t still be alive.”

There are noises of agreement from others in the group. For the first time, Clarke looks at the young army she’s gathered around her and is reminded that they, too, are nightbloods; that they, too, had been refugees from Jaha’s regime; that they, unlike her, had suffered under Jaha the first time around and had felt the difference that Bellamy’s laws had made.

She remembers how Bellamy had despaired over never doing enough, agonizing over not trying hard enough to keep the nightbloods safe, and she wishes she could tell him: _maybe you were unable to save them all, but you saved many. They are here, with me, and they are alive, because of you._

She _will_ tell him, she determines, next time she sees him. And she _will_ see him again.

Sadness wells up inside of her at the possibility that she won’t, but she stamps it down. “He’s clever,” she says, “and determined, and incredibly loyal; his sister is a nightblood, I’m sure you heard, and if you ask him why he became king, he’ll tell you it was because of her. To keep her safe. He’s one of the purest hearted people I’ve ever met, although he’d never believe me if I told him. All his mistakes weigh on him much more heavily than his successes. He’s afraid of heights and allergic to bees, and obsessed with reading histories so that he doesn’t repeat the same mistakes.”

“Is he a good kisser?” Raven asks slyly, and Clarke flushes.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” she retorts.

The ship lurches violently, tipping to such a degree that a number of them slide several inches sideways and one of the lanterns swings right off its hook, glass shattering as it clatters to the ground. Raven jumps to her feet and stomps out the flame before it can catch, leaving a puddle of oil and a thin trail of smoke, and then walks over to the other lantern. She blows it out, plunging them into darkness.

For a moment, there is only the harsh sound of their frightened breathing. Then the hatch is tossed open, and through its window they’re exposed to the full force of the storm: slashing rain that soaks all of them within seconds, seeping darkness—it’s not yet night but the cloud over them is black enough to make it appear so—and a howling wind that screams louder than the voice of the man shouting down at them.

“All hands on deck!” she thinks he’s saying, so she unsteadily gets to her feet and wobbles over to the ladder, pulling herself into the storm.

All is chaos. Lines snap in the gale with the sound of a whiplash— _crack, crack, crack_ —and men are bent almost double against the force of the wind as they make their way across the deck. As she watches, a massive wave smashes into the prow of the boat, froth like glittering frost washing over the slick wooden boards. Lightning licks at the sky, illuminating the scene in staccato bursts, accompanied by thunder that rolls continuously like an army of horses across the ground. The air is so thick with charged energy that she can feel it like sparks in the tips of her fingers, the strands of her hair.

More than one line has snapped, loose ends whipping around with force enough to injure, and one of the sails has come partially unfurled, fabric snapping open and closed, ends torn ragged.

“Hold that line down!” the sailor shouts at her. “We need to get the sail tied up again, or it’ll be useless!”

With several others, she pushes her way towards the rope in question. Every step is a struggle, the wind whipping her skirt around her legs, blowing into her with such force that she’s almost knocked over. The rain is cold and sharp as needles where it strikes her flesh and within seconds her teeth are chattering. She manages to grab hold of the rope but it jumps like a snake in her hands, chafing painfully against her skin.

Jasper is on one side of her, Monty on the other, heads bowed against the onslaught, feet wideset to maintain balance. She copies their stance, gritting her teeth, and for a short time the world narrows to the rough-hewn rope in her hand, the effort it takes to stop it from leaping away.

“This way!” the sailor shouts at them after some indeterminable time has passed—probably only minutes, but it feels like much longer. She looks up, squinting through the water running over her eyes, and sees that several men have wrapped the sail back around its mast and are struggling to hold it in place. “Hurry!”

More hands appear and they manage to wind the line around the sail, holding it tightly to the mast, and then someone ties it down in a complicated knot.

“There,” he says, “that should—”

The rest of his sentence is lost as a particularly massive wave broadsides the boat, tilting it at a forty-five degree angle. Screams fill the air as people slide helplessly across the rain-slickened deck, fingers scrabbling against the surface for purchase. Those that are lucky find something to hold onto—rope or rail—while those that are not disappear screaming over the side.

She’s not sure how many are swallowed by the sea, but when the ship finally rights itself—her hands are slick with blood like oil from where the line had cut deeply into her palms—it’s evident that it’s occupied by less people than before. Fear is like ice in her stomach, colder than the water she’s drenched in, and she can feel it clawing its way up her throat. She wants to scream but knows that no sound would come out if she did—and even if there were sound, the storm would swallow it—so she clenches her teeth hard enough that pain shoots through her jaw, and squeezes her eyes shut, and holds on for dear life to the rope, praying that it doesn’t snap.

They’re at the mercy of the gods, their ship tossed about by the waves like a piece of paper on the wind. The deck tilts, first one way, then another, and several times her feet slide out from beneath her, only her desperate grasp on the rope stopping her from sliding overboard. Somewhere, a rope snaps, and people less lucky than her are given up as an offering to the sea. The storm is a monster, with a thunderous voice, lightning for eyes and rain for teeth; it bites down upon them, chews and then swallows, over and over again.

 _How much longer?_ she thinks to herself, desperately, knowing in her fear-ridden heart that there’s only so much longer they can last.

Then, after endless hours have passed, the storm spits them out. In a remarkably short amount of time, the wind dies down to a whisper, the clouds fading into a night sky where the first stars are visible. The vessel rights itself on waves that feel like ripples in a pond, compared to what had come before, and the sudden lack of rocking makes her stomach jolt.

“Oh, thank the gods,” Jasper gasps out beside her, before collapsing and vomiting noisily onto the deck.

◊◊◊

Most of her people are still alive, she discovers when she musters the energy to release the rope that had become her lifeline and stagger off in search of them. Five were swept off the deck during the worst of the storm surge, and a handful more nurse injuries, but for the most part she’s relieved that the damage isn’t worse. Almost everyone is bleeding, blood staining their skin and clothes like ink—there’s no light but the stars and moon; everything appears black and no one has yet noticed that they’re not bleeding red, but she knows they will. Likely there will be trouble come morning, but she doesn’t have the mental strength to think that far ahead.

After checking her people over and doing her best to tend to injuries in the darkness, she seeks out the captain. He’s slumped against the steering wheel at the ship’s brow, eyes closed in exhaustion; she thinks he might be passed out, or dead, but his eyes flutter open when he hears her approach.

“I see you survived,” he says gruffly; she can’t tell whether he’s glad or disappointed. “That storm was...a little rough.” She thinks that concession from him means it was one of the worst he’s sailed through. He manages to raise a hand to point at the constellations above, although she doesn’t see the detailed map there that he does. “We’ve been blown off course. At least a couple of days, by my estimation. I’ll have to rechart our course in the morning.”

“At least we’re alive,” she says quietly. “Largely thanks to you, I imagine.”

He grunts. “That’s my job.”

“Well, I’d like to thank you all the same.”

He says nothing; his eyes flutter shut again, and she takes that as her cue to leave.

Exhaustion rides deep in her bones but she fights it as best she can, working through the night to take care of the injured. She splints broken bones using debris that lays scattered over the deck, wraps cuts in torn cloth, checks for concussion and internal bleeding. Dawn light, clean and pure, is flooding over the deck by the time she finally rises, wiping her blood encrusted hands on her skirt with a sigh. Her clothes are still damp, her hair wildly tangled, her palms stinging from where they’d been lacerated by the rope. She longs for sleep, more than she’s ever longed for something before.

“Miss, wait.” One of the sailors stops her, and she follows his eyes to where he’s looking at her hands, stained black and red with blood that is her own and others. “You’re a nightblood,” he says. There’s no recrimination in his voice, but perhaps he’s too tired to work up disgust.

She smiles at him tightly. “Yes,” she says. “We all are. I hope that’s not going to be a problem.” She manages to put a hint of a threat into her voice.

“Oh, not with me, Miss,” he says, wide-eyed and earnest. “You helped keep our ship afloat. As far as I’m concerned, that’s earned you respect, regardless of the colour of your blood. I’m sure the others will see it the same way, as well.”

“They better,” she says, flashing teeth, unable to will up the energy to threaten him more completely. Then she stumbles towards the hatch, down the ladder and into the cargo hold, where she collapses somewhere in the vicinity of her bedroll.

Her exhaustion catches up with her the second she stops moving, and she’s asleep within moments.

◊◊◊

Twenty-five days have passed since she last set foot on land. She almost cries out in relief when Polis’ southern shoreline comes into view, a black scribble on the horizon that resolves into scrubby trees and tall, windswept grasses as they approach. Port Wasin is clearly outlined against the flatness of the surrounding landscape, the towers of its lord’s hold starkly visible.

She stands at the prow of the ship, next to the captain, wanting to watch as they make landfall for the first time in nearly a month. Watching the waves slam against the hull doesn’t nauseate her the way it had when their journey had just begun. She’s able to walk across the deck with confidence now, knows the terminology for most of the ship’s parts and tasks, and, on occasion, had even been allowed to help raise the sail.

Which isn’t to say that she’s not relieved when the ship at last passes the seawall and drifts through the calm harbour towards a dock. They’ve all packed their things, and most of her people are standing in a huddle on the deck, waiting for the gangplank to be lowered. Once the captain has finished overseeing the docking—the lowering of the anchor, furling of the sails, tying off of the ropes—she approaches him and thrusts a bag heavy with coin into his hand.

“Payment,” she says, “as promised. Fifteen gold coins for every head, and a little extra for seeing us through that storm.”

The captain opens the bag’s drawstring and peers inside, but doesn’t bother counting the coins. “S’not a problem,” he grunts. And then, “Where are you headed to now?”

“Back to Arkadia,” she replies. “My people are at war.”

He seems to struggle with himself briefly before saying, “I just wanted to apologize, My Lady, for what occurred that first night. I’m ashamed of it, I am. And truly, I hold no prejudice towards nightbloods.”

She gives him a small smile. Her hostility towards him had faded greatly during their weeks together at sea. “You’re forgiven, Captain. Thank you for getting us here safely, and in much faster time than it would have taken over land.”

Her people have already disembarked so she leaves him, crossing the gangplank in a few steps to join them on the docks. The wooden planks are similar to those on the boat, yet fundamentally different by virtue of being connected to land. She sighs deeply, relieved to once again be on solid ground, and considers sinking into a seated position, as several of the others have, to cherish the fact that the dock isn’t rocking beneath her. (Jasper, comically, is stretched out full-length upon the dock and presses his lips to the wood, loudly declaring his thanks to the gods for keeping him alive.)

But there’s no time to stop, not even for a moment; already she’s turned her attention forward, to the journey that yet lays ahead. “Everybody, up,” she announces. “We have hours yet before nightfall. I plan to be well on the way to Arkadia by then.”

There are groans, but no one argues. It takes a few wobbling steps to get used to the fact that the ground doesn’t rock as she walks, to get the use of her land legs back, but once she does she’s striding off, expecting the others to follow.

Port Wasin is a bustling port town, the biggest in Polis. The streets are crowded, but with a couple of questions directed at passersby, they manage to find their way to the market. There, she hands Raven a moneypouch and leaves her with the task of procuring food for their journey, while she goes off in search of news and a map.

The first is easier to find than the second. The streets are buzzing with gossip, and all she needs to do is keep her ears tuned, waiting for something of use to her to catch her attention.

One month after retaking the crown, Bellamy is still the main topic of conversation. People speak wildly of how he had stormed the palace singlehandedly, dragging Jaha out and beheading him on the palace’s front steps for everyone to see. They speak of how he had stayed hidden for three years, abandoning his people to Jaha’s wrath and returning only when the war was over. Some speak of how he had taken the crown for himself and how that made him no better than Jaha, while others speak of how the mantle had been forced upon him by those who had survived.

They speak of many things, but one thing is constant across all stories: Bellamy has indeed returned to Polis and been re-crowned king, and the endless war has come to a sudden end. She wishes she knew how much of the rest of it was true.

She discovers also that Port Wasin had been left untouched by Jaha, as the main route of trade in and out of Polis, and as such has been flooded with refugees and people searching for new lives. No one gives her ragged appearance a second glance, for which she is grateful.

It takes time before she finally hears the news she’s seeking. “Arkadia stands in defiance of their new queen,” one woman is saying to another, and she stops.

“You have news of Arkadia?” she asks. When they look at her curiously, she hastily adds, “A second cousin of mine is from there. I worry for her safety.”

The face of the woman who had spoken softens. “Likely, she is fine. As far as I’ve heard, the only people Queen Nia has executed is the royal family, and anyone who directly opposes her; most common folk continue to go about their lives, unchanged.”

“Then what did you mean, when you said ‘Arkadia stands in defiance’?”

The woman sniffs. “Their army has gathered in the Dead Sand, just beyond Arkadia’s borders. Pointless act of rebellion; Queen Nia’s army could crush them under her thumb. But she hasn’t attacked them yet, and probably won’t, not unless they cross the border.”

“In the Dead Sand?” Clarke asks, heart sinking.

The woman misinterprets her despair as confusion. “I know, dreadful place to make a stand. The queen is likely hoping the heat will kill them, so she won’t have to. Although if they haven’t succumbed to the desert yet, it’s unlikely they will.”

“Thank you,” Clarke says, and then clarifies, “for reassuring me about my cousin. It’s been so long since I’ve heard from her.”

“Oh, I’m sure she’s fine,” the woman says. “As long as she’s no relation to Queen Abigail, Queen Nia has no reason to want her dead.”

After thanking them again, Clarke hurries off down the street, thoughts churning. Dread is curdling in her stomach, sour and stale.

Where Polis bordered Arkadia to the west, the Dead Sand bordered it to the east. To the south was the sea, and no port towns between here and Luterra; to the north was Azgeda.

In order for her to join the army of her people, she would need to cross the entirely of Arkadia, a land currently overrun by an army of people whose queen no doubt wanted her head.

◊◊◊

Two weeks later finds them inside Arkadia’s border. Her hair has been dyed night-black with Raven’s help, who assures her that she’s unrecognizable as princess of Arkadia. Still, they travel as discreetly as possible—difficult for a company of twenty—staying off the main thoroughfares and outside of the towns as much as possible.

It feels…good, to be back in her homeland again. The realization surprises her; she had felt little connection to Arkadia since her father’s death. But she supposes that part of her soul will always sing of desert winds.

A hundred miles inside Arkadia’s border, the grasses of the plains give way to rolling dunes of sand. They stop outside the last town before the true desert begins, and she sends several people in with instructions for supplies.

“As many water skins as you can find,” she instructs, “water stops in the desert are few and far between. And purchase furs, one for every person; nights get cold in the desert. A couple of pack camels, if you can afford it, to carry our things. And, of course, food. There’s not much hunting to be had here.”

She waits with most of the group some distance outside the town’s borders. Although she would certainly be useful in purchasing the supplies, being the only one of the group who actually grew up in the desert, she doesn’t want to risk being recognized.

Jasper, Monty, and the others who had gone with them manage to procure three camels to be used as pack animals, as well as sufficient amounts of food that should see them through until they reach the army. They leave that night for the trek across the desert.

In the desert, you almost cease to exist; that’s something she’s always liked about it. Footsteps are erased by shifting sand mere moments after being created—there’s nothing of permanence, no path to be followed. It’s quiet, except for the wind as it whispers over the dunes, or the odd call of a desert thrush. It’s endless, sand unfurling in front of them like waves on the sea, frozen in time, and the sky stretching from horizon to horizon.

The desert makes people feel small, insignificant, lost, and that’s what some hate about it; but she grew up a princess in a castle, constantly scrutinized, always important, and being made to feel insignificant makes her feel free.

The days are hotter than a fire, the sand like coals beneath the soles of their boots, so they try to sleep through them, setting up tents that block the worst of the sun’s rays but do nothing to remove the heat from the dry air. Nights are so cold that their breath ghosts in front of them, so they wrap themselves in furs and cover as much distance as they can, stomping warmth into their toes with every step.

“Gods above,” Raven mutters to her the second night, her teeth chattering, “you grew up in this gods-forsaken place?”

“It’s not so bad as all that,” Clarke says, but most of the others disagree; they huddle in upon themselves while they march through the night, silent and sullen, and strip down to their underclothes during the day, groaning about the heat. More than one falls prey to heat sickness, the fever and flushed skin and disorientation that comes with not drinking enough water.

It would be worse if she weren’t there to guide them. She knows when to stop and rest, how to properly ration the water so they stay hydrated but don’t run the risk of running out, how to use the stars as a guide to keep them moving due west. The desert has taken plenty of lives before, but she won’t let it take any of theirs. Not when the war has yet to even begin.

Because the desert is—if not flat, then close to it—they’re able to see the army days before they actually reach it. The glow from their fires light up the dark sea sand like candles, from this distance. When the sun rises she can see their tents, hundreds of them comprised of canvas the same colour as the sand; they’d be almost invisible, if it weren’t for the fact that their sharp edges contrast sharply with the desert’s undulations, square ships upon a rolling sea.

At some point, they officially leave Arkadia behind and enter the Dead Sand, although there are no guardposts, no border patrols, not here. It had taken nine nights of walking to get to this point, and more than one person in her party collapses to their knees upon seeing the army, the end of their journey.

Of course, if they can see the army, then the army can also see them, and they are still some distance away when five riders approach them.

She recognizes the one in the forefront: Gustus, who had once been a championed knight for Arkadia. She hadn’t seen him in years, not since—

His eyes widen when he sees her, the only part of his face that remotely shifts. There’s no doubt he recognizes her, despite the new colour of her hair, the changes that have come over her face in the years since they had last met.

“Princess,” he breathes, sliding off of his horse in order to give her a proper bow. “Welcome home.”

“We’ve come to join the army,” she says. “I know that we’re not many, hardly enough to make a difference—”

“Every body makes a difference,” Gustus says, “when we’re this outnumbered.”

“Polis’ army will be joining us,” she continues, “Lead by King Bellamy.” She _hopes_ ; Lincoln and Octavia should have reached Polis by now, or close to it, and surely upon hearing their message Bellamy would rush to gather what was left of his shattered army and bring them to her aid.

Gustus’ eyes light up; again, the only part of his face that moves, and if she hadn’t known him she might not have noticed. “That _is_ good news,” he says. “With their help, we might actually have a chance.”

“I certainly hope so,” Clarke says grimly. “Because I don’t plan on allowing Queen Nia my throne. Not while I’m still alive.”

“I expect nothing less from you, Your Royal Highness,” Gustus says, bowing again. “You always were a fierce fighter; I feel we may win this war on your determination alone.”

Clarke smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes.

“Leave your people in the hands of my men, they will ensure everyone makes it to camp safely,” Gustus continues. “If you come with me, I’ll take you directly to the army’s commander. I’m sure she’ll be glad to see you.”

She climbs onto the saddle in front of him, gripping the reins harder than she normally would; it’s been some time since she last sat a horse. The desert miles disappear quickly under the gelding’s churning hooves, and her thoughts are so focused on the task at hand that the true meaning of his words doesn’t register, not until they’ve dismounted in front of a large canvas tent set up in the middle of the camp. He disappears inside, and a tall, slender woman steps out in his place.

Shock as cold as ice douses her, running down her spine and stopping her heart.

“Lexa,” she says through numb lips.

“Clarke.” The commander steps out of the tent’s shadow and the sun hits her face in such a way that her eyes flash brilliant green. “It’s good to see you again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just got a new job so my free time is almost non-existent now, and I'm also out of town for four days next weekend. So most likely the next update will be delayed by a couple of days. Sorry in advance!
> 
> What did you think?


	7. After: queen of starlight and sand (pt 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’ve changed,” he says, but not in the way Lexa had; there’s a sorrow in his voice, not because she has changed, but because he wasn’t there to see it. “You’ve lost weight—”
> 
> “Only weight I didn’t need to have,” she tells him. “I’m no soft princess anymore, I’m all muscle—” She flexes her arm to make her point, and he smiles weakly. 
> 
> He’s changed, too: his face is harder, older, his eyes even more serious than they had been. He carries himself stiffly, taut, like a drawn bowstring, all of his muscles ready to spring into action at the slightest provocation. 
> 
> But he’s here, and the awe of it nearly overwhelms her. She raises her hand to his cheek, trailing it down to his jawbone, tracing her fingers along his chin, around his lips. His breath flutters out in a sigh against her skin. 
> 
> “Gods, I’ve missed you,” he whispers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry for the delay! I struggled majorly with writing this chapter (still not 100% happy with it, but c'est la vie) and I've been too busy to give this story the attention it deserves. 
> 
> Hope this update was worth the wait!

Tension crackles on the air between them, no match for the rage that’s boiling her blood. Lexa’s face is calm, impassive, as if her arrival hasn’t just shaken Clarke to her core.

“I wish I could say the same.” Her voice is as cold as a desert night, but Lexa only smiles.

“Still not over it, Clarke?” Lexa’s tone is scornful, dismissive.

“ _It_ ,” Clarke says sharply, “killed my father, so no, I’m not over it.”

“I was duty-bound to your mother as queen,” Lexa says patiently, as if explaining herself to a small child. “When I caught your father sending that letter, I had no choice but to report him. Why can’t you see that?”

“Perhaps that’s so, but if you truly—” She cuts off abruptly, mouth snapping shut. _Loved me_ , she was about to say, but she didn’t want to think about Lexa’s love for her, the love she had returned until Lexa had broken her heart.

It didn’t matter now, and it was for the best; losing Lexa had led her to Polis, which had led her to Bellamy, and the love she held for him was a roaring fire compared to the candle flame that had been her love for Lexa. Switching tracks entirely, she asks, “How did you come to be commander of this army?”

“Gustus and I returned to the capital shortly after you left for Polis,” Lexa says. “There was no reason for us to stay away, with you no longer there. Queen Abigail was more than willing to let us back into the guard; unlike you, she understood the difficulties of duty.” Her voice isn’t sharp, no audible intent to injure, but they sting all the same. “I worked my way up to commander. I earned it.”

If Clarke’s being honest, Lexa always had been one of the best knights of her mother’s guard, even when she had been not yet twenty. It’s not hard to believe that she had become commander based on skill alone, although she wishes there was more to it, something that would give her clear conscience to hate Lexa.

“You’ve changed,” Lexa notes, when Clarke offers up no comment. “Not just the colour of your hair; your eyes, too. You’ve grown harder, grown up.”

“Don’t do that,” Clarke snaps.

“Do what?” Lexa’s voice is all smooth innocence, a tone which only increases Clarke’s ire.

“Act like you know me! It’s been five years since we’ve seen each other, Lexa; of _course_ I’ve changed, but it’s none of your business how.” She sighs. “I’ve returned only to take back the throne from Nia. If I must work with you to accomplish that then I will, but that doesn’t mean I’ve forgiven you.”

“Fine.” For the first time a crack appears in Lexa’s calm, a stone thrown in her placid waters. “Let’s talk of war, then. How many did you bring with you?”

“Just twenty, for now.” When Lexa’s eyes widen in disbelief, she adds, “I sent a message to Polis. Their army will be joining us as soon as they can.”

“Ah, yes,” Lexa says, far too casually. “I forgot. Your mother took you to Polis to offer your hand in marriage to their king. A wise move on her part, although I doubt she was anticipating needing their army to fight this war.”

“It’s not just a political union,” Clarke says, somewhat ruthlessly. “I love Bellamy. Even if I didn’t have to marry him out of duty, I would choose to do so anyway.” An expression flitters across Lexa’s face, too quickly for Clarke to identify, before her mask falls back into place.

“Always a blessing when duty corresponds with choice,” Lexa says, not quite managing an unruffled tone.

“I do feel blessed.” There’s an awkward, strained silence before Clarke adds, “The rest of my people should arrive shortly. Is there a place you’d prefer for us to set up our camp?”

“Yes.” Lexa nods jerkily. “To the south; Gustus can show you where. I’ll allow you the rest of the afternoon to settle in. Then perhaps you could join me in my tent for dinner?”

“Perhaps _after_ dinner,” Clarke says, not unkindly.

Lexa’s eyes flash, the only visible sign of her anger. “After dinner, then,” she snaps. “I wouldn’t like you to feel _uncomfortable_.” She whirls on her heels and marches back inside her tent. Moments later, Gustus steps out, expression unreadable.

“Follow me,” he says, and she falls into step behind him as he leads her through camp. Her people are already waiting, some swaying on their feet. “You may set up your camp here,” Gustus tells them. “If you have any questions, you know where to find myself or the commander.”

He leaves them, and it doesn’t take long for them to set up their tents and find places for their meager belongings. And just like that, the desert becomes their temporary home.

There are no trees in the desert, but she begins counting days again, marking them with charcoal on the back of a crumpled piece of parchment. (On the front of the parchment is a drawing of Bellamy’s eyes, the only part of him she remembers well enough to confidently sketch; the portrait she had done of him on their last morning together had become lost mere weeks in her journey and she had attempted numerous times to recreate the image before giving up.)

How long would it take Bellamy to march to the Dead Sand? He had half the distance to cover that she had, but the entire journey would be over land. A month and a half then, on foot, a little less if they were mounted.

She wishes to send him a message of desert warnings and news of her safe arrival, and she wishes to receive one in turn from him; but none of the hawks here would know how to find him, and none of his would know how to find her. So there’s little for her to do but wait, and mark his imagined progress daily on a hand-drawn map.

Lexa seeks her out several times during the first week but she manages to brush her off, claiming to need rest or to take care of the people she’d brought with her; eventually Lexa gives up, and they see each other only in passing. There’s little need for them to meet and discuss the war, not when the war is waiting on the arrival of Polis’ army.

She supposes she has forgiven Lexa, in the way that she no longer cares enough about Lexa to be angry with her. But she has little reason to be friendly with her, despite her reasons for what she did, and no interest in revisiting their past, which Lexa seems set upon doing.

So she avoids the army’s commander, and spends time getting to know the army. These are her people, after all, people that were loyal enough to the Griffin family to spend months waiting in the gods-forsaken desert for a war that might never come.

She waits with them.

She trains with them, she eats with them, she talks with them, she gets to know them. She splits her time between the army and the people who had marched with her, and it’s enough to fill her days, but every night she marks another line on her piece of parchment and as the days pass—weeks turn to a month, and then two—she begins to worry. What if something had befallen Bellamy? What if Lincoln had never reached him with her message? What if he no longer cared enough to come?

So she keeps herself busy but she can’t stop her eyes from drifting to the rolling hills of sand whenever they’re not otherwise occupied, hoping to see the army appear there.

_Please Bellamy,_ she beseeches him in her thoughts. _Everything depends on you_.

◊◊◊

The sound of horns wakes her from a light slumber. She leaps from her blankets, pulling on clothes to battle the chill of the predawn air, knowing without knowing _how_ she knows what the sound signifies.

In her own bed on the other side of the tent, Raven stirs. “What’s going on?” she asks, voice clouded with sleep.

“Bellamy,” Clarke replies. “He’s here.” She sounds remarkably calm, given how her heart is bouncing in her chest, energy zipping along her veins. Perhaps she hasn’t realized just how much she’s _missed him_ , not until this exact moment when she is so close to seeing him again.

As soon as her feet have settled into her boots she pushes aside the front flap of her tent and takes off at a run towards the camp’s perimeter. A guard is stationed there, twenty men all facing towards the darkened dunes to the west, standing at attention as if ready for battle. Impatiently she pushes her way through them, ignoring the shouts directed at her, telling her to stay back.

This army is no foe. She knows it; she _knows_.

She runs forward a hundred yards or so before coming to a halt, the army still too far away for her to cover the distance on foot. The sand is deep purple underfoot, the sky grey fading to lavender, stars washed out by the coming morning; there’s not enough light for her to make out details, to identify the army as anything more than a smudge on the horizon.

She wishes she had a spyglass. Lacking one, she’s forced to wait, hopping from foot to foot with her impatience. (And partially from the cold; without the sun to warm it, the air slides like daggers into her lungs, sends needles of ice into her fingers and toes. She doesn’t care.)

Gradually, the dark shadow of the army resolves into riders, three at the forefront, one carrying a staff from which a banner hangs limply.

Perhaps they can see her, too, standing apart from the rest. The rider in the middle breaks from the other two, kicking his horse into a canter. She can see his outline, silhouetted against the silvery sky: tousled hair and broad shoulders and square jaw and it’s him, it’s _him_ —

Before his mount has come to a full stop he’s sliding to the ground and charging towards her, and she only catches a glimpse of his face in full, beautiful detail for half a second before he crashes into her, arms wrapping tightly around her back and lifting her several inches into the air.

“Clarke,” he whispers into her hair, and nothing more. Just her name, over and over. His breath hitches unevenly in his chest, his heart beating strongly against her own.

For her part, she says nothing. She doesn’t think there’s words for the feeling that’s bubbling from her stomach through her chest, bringing something that might be a laugh or a sob to her tongue. Holding him to her as tightly as she can, she buries her face in his neck and breathes in his scent: strongly of sweat, but even more strongly of _him_ , a scent she hasn’t encountered in three years but immediately reminds her of home.

How long do they stand there, holding each other so tightly her bones feel as if they might crack beneath his strength? When they finally break apart, the sky has lightened by several more shades, bright enough to illuminate his face.

His hands come to rest on her shoulders, and he studies her intently. She becomes aware of the faded black dye in her hair, gold peeking through at the roots and where the dye has washed out, tied into a rough braid at the nape of her neck; of the sand and dirt permanently encrusted into her skin, the crispy redness where she’d stayed out in the sun too long. She knows she must look a wreck, but he’s staring at her the way he might stare at the sun, dazed and blinded.

“You’ve changed,” he says, but not in the way Lexa had; there’s a sorrow in his voice, not because she _has_ changed, but because he wasn’t there to see it. “You’ve lost weight—”

“Only weight I didn’t need to have,” she tells him. “I’m no soft princess anymore, I’m all muscle—” She flexes her arm to make her point, and he smiles weakly.

He’s changed, too: his face is harder, older, his eyes even more serious than they had been. He carries himself stiffly, taut, like a drawn bowstring, all of his muscles ready to spring into action at the slightest provocation.

But he’s _here_ , and the awe of it nearly overwhelms her. She raises her hand to his cheek, trailing it down to his jawbone, tracing her fingers along his chin, around his lips. His breath flutters out in a sigh against her skin.

“ _Gods_ , I’ve missed you,” he whispers, “I’ve missed you so much—”

She throws her arms around him again, this time lifting herself up onto her toes so that she can press her lips against his. They’re just the way she remembered, chapped but soft; their lips remember each other, fitting together in a way that feels _right_.

The kiss is soft, hesitant, exploratory, their first kiss all over again, and neither of them push it into being something else. The truth is it’s been more than three years since they’ve seen each other, a large chunk of their lives that the other wasn’t privy to, and they’ll need time to relearn each other. But this is good, this is all she needs for now; kissing him feels more like home than returning to Arkadia ever did.

They break apart only when someone clears his throat behind them, and she looks over Bellamy’s shoulder to see Kane and Miller have joined them, Miller carrying the banner. Someone comes up on her other side, and she looks over to see Gustus. She takes a half-step away from Bellamy, twining their hands together instead in a more acceptable display of affection.

“Gustus,” she says, “may I introduce you to King Bellamy of Polis; Sir Marcus Kane, his first advisor; and Sir Nathan Miller.”

“ _Captain_ Miller, now,” Miller corrects with a lopsided smile. Her eyes widen, and Bellamy answers her unspoken question with a slight shake of his head.

“Your Majesty, Captain Miller, Sir Kane,” she continues, keeping her voice level with an effort—it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Pike had died in the war; the war had claimed many lives, many of whom she was sure she had known. “Meet Gustus, first lieutenant under—Arkadia’s army’s commander.” She narrowly avoids mentioning Lexa by name, but that is not the way to break this news to Bellamy.

Gustus offers a stiff bow to Bellamy, a nod of his head to Miller and Kane. “The commander has been eagerly awaiting your arrival,” he says. “She will want to meet you immediately.”

“You may take us to her,” Bellamy says, but Clarke tugs on his hand. He turns his attention to her, a little surprised at the interruption.

“Can I speak to you for a moment?” she asks him quietly. “In private?”

“Of course.” He allows her to pull him some distance away, where they’re out of earshot of the others.

No easy way to say it, so she says it bluntly: “Lexa is commander of this army.”

His eyes darken with outrage. “Lexa,” he says flatly, a brand of anger that she knows could result in a massive eruption if she doesn’t find a way to calm it.

“It’s fine,” she tells him hurriedly. “I made it perfectly clear where we stand, and for the most part she hasn’t tried crossing any lines.” And then, realizing the true source of his agitation, she rushes to add, “There’s nothing between us anymore, Bellamy. There hasn’t been since I met you.”

He shakes his head roughly. “She betrayed your father,” he growls. “Do you truly trust her to lead this army?”

“I don’t have a choice.”

“You do,” he insists. “You’re queen in all but name, Clarke. You could demote her, name someone else in her place. The people would listen to you.”

“Would they?” she asks. “I’m the missing princess who hasn’t set foot in my homeland in almost four years. Lexa has been their commander for nearly that long. They look to her, not to me. And besides, she’s good at what she does, the youngest and most esteemed commander in generations. I—”

“Don’t tell me that you trust her.”

“I don’t,” she says hurriedly. “Not in most things, anyway. But she wants the same things we do, Bellamy. She would fight and die for this kingdom.”

“So you think we should work with her to get back the throne.”

“Yes.”

He sighs, and she knows she’s won him over. “I came here to support you,” he says, “and I plan on doing that. If that means standing beside Lexa, I’ll do so. But don’t expect me to act friendly towards her.”

Clarke laughs. “I’m hardly capable of that myself,” she tells him.

“There’s much we need to catch up on,” he says, a little wistfully. “But it can wait. Plans of war come first.” She squeezes his hand reassuringly, and he grips back tightly. Side by side, they walk back to the others, and he lends her a hand so she can swing up onto his horse in front of him.

“Now you may take us to your commander,” Bellamy tells Gustus.

Lexa had evidently heard word of the army’s arrival, or perhaps she had been woken by the horns as Clarke had, because she’s standing outside her tent when they arrive; calm and composed, and wearing a simple gown in forest green. She waits until they’ve all dismounted before sweeping a bow in Bellamy’s direction.

“King Bellamy, I presume,” she says. “It’s an honour.”

“Likewise, Commander,” Bellamy replies. Clarke thinks the tightness in her voice is only noticeable to her.

“I understand the journey here was long and gruelling,” Lexa says. “Is there anything I can offer you in the way of comfort? It’s too early for breakfast yet—”

“There will be plenty of time for comfort later,” Bellamy cuts her off. “At the moment, I wish to hear the details of the situation. It’s been months since I last heard news from a reliable source.”

“Of course,” Lexa says, an undeniable chill in her voice. “Please, come in and have a seat.” She waits until everyone is settled on the pillows she has set out on the floor of the tent before beginning.

“As I’m sure you’ve heard, Queen Nia of Azgeda has taken the throne of Arkadia. Just under six months ago, now, her armies invaded the kingdom unprovoked. They swept towards the capital, and met little resistance in taking it. Nia had no interest in starting a war; she wanted the kingdom untouched. Her only desire was Queen Abigail’s head, and she got it.”

“You didn’t fight for your queen?” Bellamy’s voice is cold, condemning.

“She sent us away. Arkadia’s army is no match for Azgeda’s, especially with so little warning. It was not easy for me to abandon my queen, Your Majesty. But I follow her wishes first and foremost.”

“So you’ve been waiting here ever since,” Bellamy says flatly. At Lexa’s short nod, he asks, “What was your plan, then? You couldn’t have known Clarke would show up.”

Lexa’s answering smile is sharp as the sword she wears at her hip. “To fight and die, most likely. To wait until Nia’s guard was done and take her unawares. This plan is better.”

There’s nothing for Bellamy to say to that, so he changes the subject. “It’s been a hard march from Polis; many are feeling the effects of the journey across the desert. I request the day to settle my people, and suggest we reconvene on the morrow to discuss our plans of attack.”

“Of course,” Lexa says, cool graciousness. “In the morning, then.”

◊◊◊

Later that night, Bellamy finds his way to her tent; she looks over when the tent flap rustles, expecting him, and grins in delight when she sees he’s holding a flask of wine.

“Where did you get that?” she asks.

“Brought it with me.” He shrugs, a shy smile on his face. “I thought there might be a reason for celebration upon arriving.” She hates that he sounds uncertain, so she walks over to him and wraps her arms around his waist.

“You were right,” she murmurs. “We should catch up.”

They wrap themselves in warm furs and walk some distance outside of the camp, settling on a dune that blocks out the orange glow of the campfires. Once seated, Bellamy opens the wine flask and passes it to her. She takes a swig before passing it back, and for several moments they sit in silence, drinking wine and taking in each other’s company.

“So,” he says at last, and then falters, not knowing where to begin.

“Maybe we should start at the beginning,” she suggests. “Tell me of the war, tell me of what happened after I’d left.”

His words are stuttering at first, stilted, then aided along with swallows of wine. He tells her briefly of the fighting at the walls, the fighting in the streets, the fighting at the palace; he tells her how Kane had kidnapped him and stolen him away from the palace hours before it had fallen to Jaha, how they had stayed in Indra’s village, apart from all the fighting, until Miller had sent word that it was safe to come home.

“So you see, I missed most of the war,” he says bitterly. “Lived a peaceful life in the mountains, while people elsewhere in Polis were dying. I still don’t believe I deserve to be their king, not after abandoning them and choosing to live apart. I was a coward.”

“ _Coward_ ,” she tells him, taking his hand in her own, “is the last word I’d use to describe you, Bellamy. You’ve always done what’s best for your people. And in this case, it meant staying alive so that you could provide them with hope in the future. That’s not cowardly.”

“Kane says the same thing,” he says with a short laugh. “And I know it’s the truth, but still—it will haunt me until my dying days that I played no part in Jaha’s fall. I played no part, and yet I reaped all the rewards.”

“Rewards?” she asks sceptically. “I doubt your time as king these past months has been anything but rewarding.”

He laughs again, more humorous this time. “It hasn’t been easy,” he admits. “Most of Polis lies in ruins. The nightblood population has been decimated.” He pauses before adding, “I killed Jaha. Chopped off his head myself, the night before I became king again.”

“Good,” she says fervently. “That was the right thing to do.”

“I know.” There’s no regret in his voice, but no joy either; it’s mere statement of fact. There’s a pregnant, drawn out pause, before he quietly asks, “What about you?”

“For the most part, it was unexciting,” she says. “It took us nearly two months to reach the sea, traveling first by boat and then by horse. No one stopped us, and we ran into little difficulty on the way there. Luna took us in, as Lincoln had known she would. Then Lincoln left us for a time; he was determined to rescue as many nightbloods as possible, to spread the word of a safe haven by the sea. He was a true hero, Bellamy—he singlehandedly saved dozens of nightbloods and because of him, _hundreds_ eventually found their way to Luna’s camp.”

“Lincoln’s a good man,” Bellamy says quietly. “I left him and Octavia in charge of the palace and the city while I’m gone. I know it’s in good hands.”

“One of the best,” she agrees. “Anyway, after that—” She falters, not sure how to put three years worth of memories into words. “It was mostly waiting,” she says lamely, “until we received word that you had taken back your crown. And that my mother had lost hers. So I left for Arkadia, with twenty-five others who agreed to join me. We sailed most of the way, and then walked the rest.”

She expects him to ask her about her journey, but he doesn’t. Silence expands, awkward and out of place and too big for the physical space between them. She can’t remember silences ever being uncomfortable between them, and to quell the unease squeezing her heart, she swallows the rest of the wine in several large gulps.

Setting the empty flask to the side, she stretches out on the cool sand and pats the space next to her. “Lie down with me.”

The skies above them stretch to infinity, whorls of stars, as bright and white as tiny suns, dusted across the velvety blackness. Quietly, she tells him of the constellations—the dragon and the hunter, the wolf and the lion, the seamstress, the blacksmith, the voyager—and the stories that surround them. Those myths had been her bedtime stories, and as she speaks she hears her father’s voice, soft and husky as he tucks her into bed.

Bellamy listens in silence, his hand brushing hers but not holding it. When she turns her head towards him, his gaze is focused on the night sky, starlight bathing his face in a pearly glow.

“I wanted to share this with you,” she whispers, when the last of the stories has danced away from her lips. “This part of my heart.”

For a long moment, he says nothing. His hand slides into hers, squeezes it briefly, before letting it go again. His eyes remain trained on the stars above.

She knows him. Something cold, colder than the frosty air, curls in her stomach. “What’s wrong?”

“Clarke.” His voice is quiet, serious. “You’re queen of Arkadia, now.”

“Not yet.”

“You will be.” Breath gusts out of him, a sigh like the desert wind. “And then your place will be here, with your people.”

“You _are_ my people,” she tells him earnestly. “My place is with you.” He’s beautiful, limned by starlight. A constellation all on his own.

“No.” His eyes are squeezed tightly shut now, a diamond tear glittering on his cheek. “Arkadia is your people, Clarke. That’s what it means to be their queen. And how can you be their queen from Polis?”

“We’ll figure it out.” His silence is his disagreement, she knows, and she feels compelled to argue the point further. “We always knew this would be an eventuality, Bellamy. I was always going to become queen of Arkadia. We were always going to have two nations to rule.”

“Yes, but not for _years_ yet. Your mother should have lived for decades longer. And in that time, we might have had a child, we might have found peace—” He takes a deep breath, one that shudders in his chest. “In times of peace, a regent could have ruled in your place, until our child came of age. In times of war—neither of us can afford to leave our country rudderless, Clarke.”

“You left Polis.” Her voice is small. “You left Polis to come here, even though they need you.”

Another long, stretched out silence, tense to the point of breaking. “Maybe I shouldn’t have,” he says at last.

Anger floods through her, and she jerks away from him as though struck by lightning. “Then leave,” she tells him tightly, on the cusp of shouting. “You take care of your people. I’ll take care of mine.”

“Clarke, wait—” his tone is beseeching, but she can’t listen to it, not now. She jumps to her feet, buries her hands deep into the pockets of her furs, and stalks off towards camp, leaving him alone with the desert sky.

Tears gather on her lashes and freeze, shards of ice. Every time she blinks, she feels them cut into her skin.

◊◊◊

Raven is asleep when she enters the tent, and she tries her best to shed her layers and crawl into her blankets in silence. But she trips over the toes of her boots, eyes blinded by tears, stumbles and nearly falls, a strangled curse falling from her lips.

And Raven, light sleeper that she is, is awake in a flash. “Clarke?” she murmurs. “Is that you?”

“Go back to sleep, Raven.” She wills her voice to be normal, and fails; the words come out choked, a half-sob. There’s a rustle of blankets as Raven sits up in her bedding.

“What’s wrong? What happened?” There’s genuine concern in her friend’s voice, and it only serves to widen the cracks that are currently splintering through her.

“Nothing. Nothing. It’s fine.”

Raven makes a sceptical noise deep in her throat, and Clarke finally manages to fall into her blankets. “It’s not nothing, Clarke. I know you.”

“Maybe you don’t,” she snaps, and immediately regrets it. It’s not Raven’s fault, the mess the world has landed her in. “Sorry. But I just—I don’t want to talk about it, alright?”

“Alright,” Raven concedes, after a considering pause. “But if you need me to kick his ass for you, I will.”

Clarke laughs, a fragile sound that shudders up from her lungs and hardly makes it to her tongue. “Don’t. It’s not his fault.”

Only a half-lie; she could and did blame him for his hurtful words, for bringing to attention a problem she had been hoping they could ignore until a later date. But it wasn’t his fault that such a problem existed. It wasn’t his fault that they were rulers of two different lands, and that their duty to their people would always supersede their own love for each other.

“Well, if you decide you want to talk, I’m always here,” Raven murmurs. “And if you don’t, please keep your crying as quiet as possible. There’s hours yet until morning, and I plan to sleep for most of them.” There’s no bite to her words, only affection, and Clarke chokes out another laugh.

Raven settles back into her blankets and soon her breathing evens out; for her part, Clarke lies awake, guilt twisting her insides.

Perhaps Bellamy _should_ go back to Polis. What right did she have to ask him here, when his nation was still war-torn, shattered, badly in need of their king?

But without his army, she had no hope of winning back her crown.

What if she gave up the crown, returned to Polis not as queen or even princess of Arkadia, but simply as Clarke Griffin?

No. That option is not an option at all; she knows it. If she has to give up her life with Bellamy to save her kingdom, she’ll do it. If she has to give up her life—full stop—to save her kingdom, she’ll do it. Bellamy had been right; her place was here, with her people. Nothing short of death could strip her of that duty.

So. She would stay and she would fight, even if Bellamy left, even if it meant unavoidable loss. For some reason, her certainty in the only real decision she can make steadies her. She could not and would not let her feelings for Bellamy get in the way of her duties as queen. And she knows that that is what he meant, when he said maybe he shouldn’t have left, that he should not and could not let his feelings for her get in the way of his duties as king.

Feeling somehow better—feeling the queen she would someday be—she drops off into a peaceful sleep.

◊◊◊

The first time she sees Bellamy the next morning is in Lexa’s tent for the war council meeting. He’s already in the tent when she arrives, looking rumpled and disgruntled, and meets her eyes only briefly before returning his attention to the maps spread out on the tent’s floor.

She knows she owes him an apology, knows that they need to find the time to talk about the hurdles in front of them openly and honestly, but now is not the time. So she takes up her place across the tent for him, offers a murmured “Good morning” to everyone present—which is all of them; she’d been the last to arrive—and says nothing more. Plans of war require her full attention, and it’s with difficulty that she stops herself from glancing in Bellamy’s direction every few moments.

“With King Bellamy’s forces joining our own,” Lexa begins without preamble, “our army has nearly quadrupled in size, more than a match for Azgeda. I’m sure by now the queen has received word of Polis coming to our aid. Gathering an openly hostile force to march against her provides her with more than enough reason to attack. My suggestion is that we strike as quickly as possible, before they manage to strike at us.”

Clarke nods, but she can’t help glancing worriedly at Bellamy; any plan of theirs will rely heavily on his help, and if he decides to withdraw now—

Bellamy is still staring at the maps, brow furrowed, and doesn’t offer any objection.

“I have it on good word from my scouts,” Lexa continues, “that the majority of Azgeda’s forces are stationed in the capital, protecting the throne. Obviously, this is where we should direct most of our attention. If we win back the capital, we win back the kingdom. Azgeda will quickly flee when we show them their queen’s head.”

“I agree with your plan of a quick march on Arkadia,” Miller says. “But our army only just arrived a day ago. They’re exhausted from the journey. I suggest a period of rest—perhaps a week—for them to regain their strength and acclimatize to the desert.”

Miller sounds different from when she had last sat in council meeting with him; more sure of himself, more in command. But he was captain now, and if what Bellamy said was true, he had led the war against Jaha almost singlehandedly. They had all been changed.

“One week,” Lexa agrees. “Let that be enough.”

“And if it isn’t?” Bellamy asks.

Lexa meets his challenging gaze with a cool one of her own. “There’s no time for us to waste, Your Majesty. If some of your people aren’t ready in a week’s time, then we’ll leave them behind.”

Bellamy glowers, but Lexa turns her attention away from him before he can argue.

“King Bellamy will lead Polis’ forces,” Lexa says, “While I will lead Arkadia’s—”

“Correction,” Clarke says quietly. “ _I_ will lead Arkadia’s army.” She meets Lexa’s gaze and refuses to back down. “We march to take back my crown. I will lead them.”

For a moment, Lexa considers arguing before deciding against it. “Fine,” she says gracefully, as if she is not Clarke’s subject and bound to abide by her decisions. “Arkadia’s army is yours. Traveling by the fastest route, it will take us approximately ten days to reach the capital. No doubt the queen will be expecting us. It would be to our benefit if we could divert her attention.”

“How?” Clarke asks. “She’ll be able to see us and any diversion we can come up with from a hundred miles away.”

Again, Lexa fixes her with that cool, green gaze. “You,” she says simply. “Nia has already proclaimed death upon the royal line. If she sees you alive, she’ll want your head.”

“No,” Bellamy says sharply. “We’re not using Clarke as—as _bait_ , hoping Nia will bite and we can catch her before Clarke ends up dead. It’s far too risky.”

“This is war, Your Majesty,” Lexa says. “Taking risks is necessary.”

“If Clarke dies—” The words are short, like Bellamy’s bitten off the ends—“Then the entire war will have been pointless. There will be no one from the Arkadian royal line _left_ to remove Nia from the throne.” His eyes narrow, and then widen. “Unless that’s what you _want_ ,” he exclaims, “no one of royal blood left to take the throne so that you can take it for yourself.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Lexa snaps. “I was loyal to Queen Abigail and I’m loyal to Clarke now. How dare you accuse me of an elaborate scheme to see myself a queen.”

Bellamy raises his eyebrows, clearly disbelieving, and doesn’t apologize.

Silently, Clarke admits to herself that she enjoys Bellamy’s animosity towards Lexa, his less-than-professional behaviour, the way he’d jumped to her defense despite the things he’d said to her the night before. Despite the way he’s still refusing to meet her eyes. But any moment now sparks are set to fly between the king of Polis and the commander of Arkadia’s army, so she jumps in with the intent to smooth things over.

“ _If_ ,” she says, “our only choice is for me to provide a distraction for Nia, then of course I will do it. But another option may become clear to us. There are still weeks yet before we’ll reach that point.”

“Clarke’s right,” Kane speaks up for the first time. “There’s no point worrying over things that are still in the future. We need to discuss the things we can deal with _now_. How many people do you have, Lexa? What type of arms? I see most of your party is unmounted—”

For a while they talk of training maneuvers, of the most effective way to use their numbers, how best to integrate the two armies, until Lexa at last calls an end to the meeting.

As soon as the meeting is adjourned, Bellamy strides towards the front of the tent and is the first one to duck out into the desert morning. She follows him, and catches up to him within a dozen paces.

“Bellamy, wait.”

Reluctantly, he turns to face her. His expression is one she can’t read, and it pains her that they’ve come to this, strangers who can no longer tell what the other is thinking purely by the look on their face. There’s a gulf between them now, seeming almost larger than the one that had been there when they’d first met, created by the realizations of the night before.

“Clarke, I—” His voice is gruff, pleading, and she thinks she knows what he’s about to say: _I need time to figure this out_. She can accept that—she had faith that they _would_ figure it out—but there’s something she has to ask him that can’t wait.

“I need to know. Are you considering abandoning this war and taking your army back to Polis? Because if you do—” The whole plan was depending on him.

“No.” He doesn’t sound as certain about the decision as she’d have liked, but it relieves her all the same. “We’re allies now, our two kingdoms. I couldn’t in good conscience allow you to be destroyed by Azgeda. The problems of Polis can wait a while longer.”

A dutiful answer, unemotional. Her heart sinks. Is that what they were to be now? Nothing more than political allies?

“Bellamy…” She can’t help the way his name escapes from her lips, like she’s issuing a prayer. Something like sorrow, or regret, clouds his eyes, but he turns away from her.

“I need to get back to my people, spread the news that, in a week, we march again. There’s little time to waste.” With that he’s gone, catching up to Kane and Miller, who had been waiting for him some distance away.

She feels hollow, scooped out, as she watches him leave. Part of her wants to run after him but she resists the impulse, instead setting her feet to the south, returning to her own section of the camp.

For a couple of hours she manages to avoid him, as she fills her people in on the plan and spars with Raven, hoping to keep her mind off things. But she’s distracted; Raven notices and immediately guesses the source.

“You need to talk to him,” Raven urges her.

“I don’t think he wants to talk to me.”

“So? Don’t let that stop you. You’ll never work things out, Clarke, if you don’t talk about them first.”

Raven’s right (as always) and she’s achieving nothing at the moment, so she decides to listen.

She finds him walking among the tents of his army, although she has to ask numerous times if anyone’s seen the king before she’s finally able to track him down. Polis’ army is several times the size of Arkadia’s, and stretches out like its own city to the east.

“How are they doing?” she asks softly as she comes up beside him. He doesn’t seem surprised by her appearance, merely turns towards her, his expression still guarded and closed off. She hates seeing him like this, but then, she had come here to fix it; so despite the chill in her veins, she pushes forward, plastering a smile on her face.

“Many are weak,” he replies after several moments of consideration. “The march across the desert was difficult, the heat near unbearable. A number died during the journey, and some are close to, even now. I worry that they won’t be ready to march in a week.”

The cadence of his tone is off; stiff, formal, a king talking to a neighbouring queen, not a man to his betrothed. She hates it.

“Would you mind if I take a look at those who are ill?” she asks. “I’m very familiar with desert sickness.”

He hesitates for a moment before saying, “That would be helpful.”

Wordlessly, he leads her into a large tent that houses the worst of the sick, and hovers over her shoulder as she kneels to take a look at the nearest. The woman’s skin is red, cracked and burned from the sun, her lips flaking, her flesh as hot as a fire’s coals. Her breath comes out in fluttering moans, her eyes squeezed shut, lashes encrusted with sand.

Most of the patients are the same. Some are lucid, others unconscious; some complain of nausea while others say that they can’t see.

Sun blindness, dehydration, heat sickness; she’s familiar with all of them. Most of the time, people will recover if given the right treatment.

“We need to keep their skin cool, any way we can,” she says. “Wet cloths are usually best. Make sure they drink plenty of water. If they’re refusing to eat or can’t keep any food down, give them small portions or chilled soup. Body temperature needs to be regulated, as much as it can be out here; have them strip down to their underclothes during the afternoon and replace the layers as night falls.”

It isn’t much, but Bellamy nods, a look of concentration on his face. “Will they recover?” he asks, worry straining his voice.

“Most of them should.”

He hears the note in her voice, and looks at her knowingly. “Enough to march on Arkadia in a week?”

“I wouldn’t suggest it,” she admits. “They need rest, and to stay out of the sun. A march will provide neither.”

“But we have no choice.”

She shakes her head. “Even waiting a week is pushing our luck. No doubt Nia knows where we are by now, and what we’re planning. No doubt gathering an army is enough provocation for her to attack. Lexa is right; we need to strike at her before she can strike at us.”

“I know.” Bellamy’s voice is full of displeasure, at admitting Lexa is right or at not being able to care properly for his people, or maybe at both. “Some of them will die. But then, this is war, and many of them will die anyway.” He sighs, rises to his feet, obviously expecting her to do the same. “Thanks for the help, Clarke. I know you have your own people to tend to.”

It’s obviously a dismissal. His attention is not on her but on the sick people in front of him, and that cold mask has slipped back into place.

“Bellamy, can we talk?” she hates that she sounds uncertain, hates that he hesitates before nodding.

She leads him a short distance away, where they can hopefully have some modicum of privacy. The sun beats down upon them, distractingly hot and bright, and she can feel sweat beading on her forehead. Bellamy’s curls are plastered to his head with it, his skin shiny and damp, but he doesn’t complain about the heat. He only stares at her with a curious intensity, his mouth a hard line. Hardly welcoming, but she knows what she had come here to say.

She takes a deep breath before beginning, remembering the man he had been in Polis, smiling eyes and laugh lines. It helps, a little.

“I do still love you,” she says. “I never stopped and I doubt I ever will. Things have never been easy for us, Bellamy. More than three years ago, we said goodbye on the cusp of war and never doubted that we’d find our way back to each other again. We can figure this out, too. I know we can.”

He opens his mouth, maybe to argue, but before he can she continues, “But for now—our duty leads us both in the same direction. We should take advantage of that while we can; duty and choice don’t always have to be entirely exclusive.”

“So you’d rather we hide from these problems until we’re forced to face them.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“Clarke, listen,” he says, sounding pained. “I don’t think I can do that. This is hard enough already; if I were to let myself have you, I don’t think I’d be able to let you go.”

“Then _don’t_ let me go.”

“You still don’t see it. I can’t. I can’t do both.” He takes a breath before continuing, “I am not worthy of being these people’s king but they say they want me, so I will do my best by them. I won’t abandon them; not again. Never again. Right now, I choose them above all, but if you keep persisting, I don’t know that I’ll be able to hold to that choice.”

His eyes are beseeching and she wants to hold him, tries to understand.

“I love you, Clarke,” he says, words somehow both hollow and ringing. “And if it came down to it—if I had to choose between you and my people—I don’t know what choice I would make. I know which one I _should_ , but I don’t know if I’d be capable of losing you, if I have to.”

“So you’d rather lose me now,” she states flatly, and his mouth twists into a semblance of a sheepish smile.

“If it’s the right thing to do.”

“And what about me? What if I don’t want to lose you?” She catches his gaze and holds it, jaw set and stubborn. As she could have predicted, Bellamy crumbles beneath the weight of her proclamation; his eyes close, his breath stutters.

“There has to be a middle ground for us, Bellamy, a place where we can care for each other and take care of our people. I want to find it.”

“So do I,” he says quietly, after the ripples left in the wake of her statement have calmed.

Smiling, she hesitantly takes one of his hands gently in hers. He doesn’t try to pull away. “Then we will,” she says, “together. I know you have work to do, and so do I. There’s much to be done before we march for the capital. But, if you have the time—would you like to join me in my tent for dinner?”

He grins, for a second appearing almost as the man she had known, and she knows he’s thinking—as she is—of how he had shyly asked her to dinner the night they had begun to get to know each other, how those dinners had become a staple between them in the following months, a private break from the furor of the palace.

“I would love to,” he replies, before sweeping her a theatrical bow, a memory from a distant past, raising her hand lightly to his lips. A giggle escapes her, hope bubbling in her stomach, and she watches as he walks away before turning to return to her own duties.

◊◊◊

“So, be honest with me,” Raven says several hours later, “should I find another tent in which to spend the night?”

“ _Raven_ ,” Clarke groans, but can’t help a smile.

“I’m being serious,” Raven presses. “If you and the king need some alone time, I’m sure Jasper and Monty will take me in.”

The offer is tempting, she must admit; the gods knew that times in which she and Bellamy could be alone would be few and far between in the coming weeks. But she also knows that now is not the time for such things; it’s been less than two days since they were reunited, and despite their conversation earlier there’s still a gulf between them that needs to be bridged. Three years apart had changed them both, and if they were going to risk doing it again, they had to relearn each other on a level that wasn’t just physical.

But still. The offer is tempting.

“No,” she says finally. “No, you can sleep here tonight.”

“Fine,” Raven says, “but if what you’re telling me is true and you’ll end up separated again after this war is over, I don’t think you have any time to waste.”

“There’s more to my relationship with the king than sharing his bed,” she says primly, and Raven bursts into laughter.

“Gods, you royal type are so _proper_ ,” she says.

“Well, proper or not—“she sighs—“there’s distance between Bellamy and me that wasn’t there before. We need to heal that, before I can think about the other.” She distracts herself—and Raven, who is likely to push the subject further—by digging through her bag for her least travel-worn and stained dress, holding it up for approval. “Will this one do?”

Raven rolls her eyes. “You’re having dinner with the man in the middle of an army after several months of travelling and a weak before going to war. I doubt he cares if you’re wearing your finest silks or not,” she says, before relenting: “But you look beautiful in that, of course.”

Clarke nods decisively, setting the dress to the side and smoothing out the wrinkles as best she can with her hands. Then she turns her attention to dinner; there are few options here, but she’s managed to borrow a large chest to use as a table, and a couple of cushions to use as seats. She covers the chest with a silk scarf, and sets two places with battered metal plates and equally battered wine glasses. The result is a homely attempt at recreating the first dinner she and Bellamy had had together.

“It’s fine,” Raven reassures her when she notices Clarke’s consternation.

“It will have to be.”

“Things between you and Bellamy will be fine, too,” Raven says seriously. “I have faith in you guys.”

“You don’t even know him,” Clarke protests.

“Maybe not, but I have faith in _you_. And if he’s everything you say he is—he’s worth fighting for.” Raven pulls Clarke in for a hug, unexpectedly tender, before stepping towards the door. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours. Have fun.”

Bellamy arrives only minutes after Raven has slipped away, and she’s pleased to see that he, too, has attempted to dress up: his coat is dark, effectively hiding dirt and stains, and his boots have been wiped down so that if they don’t shine at least they’re not covered in grime. He smiles softly at her, and her blood warms.

“I thought we could talk of trivial things tonight,” she says once he’s seated across from her, long legs sprawled out to the side of the chest-turned-table. “Set aside our mantles of rule and our worries of war and be just _us_ for a change.”

“That sounds nice,” he says.

It’s easier than she would have believed possible. They talk initially of the difference in climate between Polis and Arkadia, Bellamy complaining of the heat and aridity.

“At least the weather here is predictable,” she says defensively, which leads her into telling him of the storm they had stumbled upon at sea, how it had gripped them in its teeth; after that she tells him of how the captain had tried to take her life for her coin, and he hisses in anger.

“What was this captain’s name?” he asks, eyes flashing, and she raises a placating hand.

“It doesn’t matter now. He later saved my life, so I feel we’re even.”

He tells her more of life in Indra’s village, of the crop fields and working with the blacksmith, and she tells him what Luna’s camp had been like.gg

“I’d like for you to meet them,” she says on the tail end of a story about how Monty and Jasper had brewed every plant within a hundred mile radius of Luna’s camp in order to make a decent ale. “They’re your people as well as mine.”

“Your people by choice,” he says with a wry smile, “mine by birth.”

“That’s not true at all!” she protests. “I asked them what they thought of you on our voyage here, and—” she was getting dangerously close to mentioning the forbidden topic of his crown, but she pushes on anyway. “—And they all agreed that their life got better when you became king. They look up to you, Bellamy.”

“Why should they? I’ve done little good since I came to power. I made rash choices and uninformed decisions, and people suffered for it.”

“On the contrary,” she says, “the laws you implemented to protect nightbloods saved hundreds or thousands of lives, even though the laws continued to be broken. You did a lot of good things as king.”

“Not enough,” he says quietly, and she knows getting him to agree with her will be impossible. Instead, she shifts the subject back to her original point; she takes a deep breath, knowing she’s about to break her own rule, before diving in. “One day, you’ll be king of Arkadia and I’ll be queen of Polis. We’ll lead both kingdoms together. It’s important that you get to know and be accepted by my people, and that I get to know and be accepted by yours. We should provide a visible, united front.” When he says nothing, she hesitates. “That is, if you still want to marry me—”

“What do you mean, _if_?” He stares at her in genuine disbelief. “Clarke, I’ve wanted to marry you since a month after we met. What I _want_ doesn’t come into it—”

“Why not?” She poses the question quietly, and his mouth drops open but before he can respond Raven ducks into the tent.

She takes in the tableau in front of her, and steps back towards the tent flap. “You’re still here,” she says awkwardly. “I can come back later—”

“It’s fine,” Bellamy says, tearing his eyes away from Clarke to glance at Raven with a tired smile. “I should be getting back to my camp anyway. It’s getting late, and tomorrow will be busy. Thanks for dinner, Clarke,” he tells her. “It was…good.” He stands, and she catches him by the arm before he can leave.

“Wait a second, please.” Glancing apologetically at Raven, she pulls him outside, a few paces distant from the tent where they won’t be overheard. Turning to face him, she fixes him with her most serious, penetrating stare.

“What you want doesn’t always have to contradict with your duty,” she tells him. “Sometimes you can have both.”

He sighs. “I used to believe that,” he says. “Back when I also thought that a few frivolous actions like hosting a feast or proclaiming my protection would actually save the nightbloods. It’s a hard world, Clarke, and things rarely turn out the way you want them to. If I’ve learned anything these past years, it’s that.”

“You’re wrong,” she says firmly. “The world is neither good nor bad; it simply is. And sometimes things don’t happen the way you want them to, but sometimes they _do_. And it’s worth it to try, and to take a chance, in the hopes that things go right.”

She can tell by the expression on his face that he’s about to disagree with her, so she places a finger gently over his mouth.

“We don’t have to talk about it now, but we _do_ have to talk about it.” She leans up on her tiptoes to plant a chaste kiss on his lips. By the time he thinks to respond, she’s already pulling away. “Goodnight, Bellamy.”

“Clarke—” By the time he calls to her, she’s already several strides away. She turns to look back at him; the silver moonlight makes him look helpless and alone. “Would you like to have dinner again tomorrow night?”

She smiles. “That would be nice.”

Bellamy may be uncertain about what the future holds for them, but she is not. She has faith in him. She has faith in _them_.

◊◊◊

Although the days are full of preparing their respective armies for war, she still finds time to introduce Bellamy to her people— _his_ people. As she had told him, they all look to him; some are awestruck, while others profess their thanks. The whole thing makes Bellamy uncomfortable, until Raven lightens the mood with a sly, “Clarke told us _all_ about you.”

“Oh, really? What did she say?” Bellamy asks, eyebrow raised and smirk on his face, and Clarke’s forced to fight down a rising blush as Raven recounts in detail Clarke’s stories from the journey, throwing in her own creative additions.

“I did not say that!” Clarke protests as Bellamy turns to her with a grin and the others burst out laughing.

“But I’m sure you thought it,” Raven counters.

Things are noticeably less tense after that, both between Bellamy and the other nightbloods and Bellamy and herself; that night when they have dinner together, the conversation flows naturally from the start as they share more stories from their time apart (she tells him how she, Raven, and Octavia used to go into the woods around Luna’s camp and have archery contests, which Raven invariably won; he tells her of the time a winter storm had left him and Kane stranded in their cabin for nearly a week).

At the end of the night he kisses her, just long enough for her to feel short on breath before pulling back. If she were to put a name to the expression in his eyes, it would be sadness, warring with confusion; she doesn’t push him. Instead she holds him to her, presses a kiss to his cheek before asking him to dinner the next night.

She spends time among his people, getting to know them. It surprises her how many recognize her on sight as Princess Clarke, King Bellamy’s betrothed, and how many wear secretive smiles when they see her and Bellamy walking through camp side by side.

They dine together every night of the week leading up to their departure. Neither of them bring up the future, their respective duties and choices; instead, they talk merely as two people who didn’t rule kingdoms might. It reminds her of their first weeks together in the palace in Polis, how they had carefully felt their way towards understanding each other, and that comparison gives her an idea.

On their last night before leaving for Arkadia, she’s waiting outside of her tent when Bellamy arrives, pack in hand.

“Come with me,” she says, taking him by the arm and ignoring his half-formed questions.

She leads him some distance away from camp, out into the moonlit dunes of the desert.

“It’s no secret garden,” she says, “but the desert has always been that kind of place for me, a place where I feel as if no one is watching and I can fully breathe.”

He smiles softly, hand slipping into hers with a casual intimacy that sparks hope through her. She hopes that he’s thinking, as she is, of the dinner they had had in his garden the night he had kissed her for the first time.

“It’s beautiful,” he says, looking at her, and she knows he is.

“It’s no feast,” she says, lowering her pack to the ground and pulling out some dinner rolls, no longer warm from the fire. “But it’s the best I could do.”

“It’s perfect,” he reassures her, sinking to the sand. “Truly, Clarke. Thank you.”

For a time they try to talk of trivial things, but both of them have more than half a mind on the coming war. It’s Bellamy who brings it up, hesitant at first.

“Another war begins tomorrow. Sometimes I feel as if I’ve known nothing but war.”

“At least this one we’ll be fighting together.” Her words are lighthearted, but he considers them seriously, before nodding as if coming to a decision.

“There will always be another war on the horizon. Of that, I’m certain. But I don’t think I ever want to fight in another one without you.”

The desert air is cold and full of meaning, and his eyes on hers hold unspoken words. A tightness in her chest she hadn’t been aware of until then loosens, and she feels suddenly as though she can breathe for the first time in three years.

“Me neither.” The words are hardly more than a whisper. His hands take hers, warm and fierce.

“Things won’t be easy,” he says.

“They never are.”

“We’ll probably spend more time apart than we do together.”

“I know.”

“But leaving you, Clarke, was never an option, and I was a fool to think it was.”

“You were.”

“I think we owe it to ourselves to try.”

“So do I.”

Several moments hang in silence on the back of this fragile promise—that regardless of what comes, they will face it together—moments in which the sand and the sky and the stars seem to fade away, the whole world compressed to the foot of space between them.

“We leave early tomorrow morning,” he says, but his eyes never leave hers. “We both should get some sleep.”

“We should,” she agrees, but something warm is rising in her chest, fizzing through her veins.

Neither of them move.

Until they both do. Simultaneously they lean towards each other, meeting in the middle with a clash of teeth, noses and foreheads bumping.

This kiss is nothing like the chaste ones they had been exchanging in their quest to relearn each other. This kiss is anything but careful, the exact opposite of holding back; their earlier kisses had been a trickling stream, a flickering candle, compared to the flood and fire of this one.

There’s a roaring in her ears that drowns out everything else. Nothing else exists except for the places where Bellamy’s touching her, his skin dancing like sparks across her own. Her relief and her love for him overwhelms her, and the only way she can hope to express it is to press herself closer, to eliminate any space that still exists between them.

There is life to be found in the desert, if one knows where to look. Water that flows beneath the ground, welling up into life-giving pools; flowers that grow out of bedrock, roots clinging to barren surfaces; lizards and birds and insects that make homes of shadowed hollows.

If her soul is made of sand, then Bellamy is the one that brings it life. His love flows like water through her veins, blooms bright and vital in her ribcage, sings to her with the voice of a falcon on the desert wind.

He is the one who makes her heart a home.

She clings to that idea the same way she clings to him, with a desperate ferocity. He is her home, and she won’t let him go.

Whatever is to come, she won’t let him go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Life is still crazy and I'm only about a quarter of the way through writing pt 3, so you can probably expect another two week delay before the next update. Apologies in advance.
> 
> Please let me know what you thought!


	8. After: queen of starlight and sand (pt 3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The queen recognizes that your force and Azgeda’s are evenly matched,” the man says calmly, “and doesn’t wish to see a war that would result in thousands of deaths. Queen Nia proposes a swordfight between a champion of her choosing and a champion of yours. Winner takes the throne.” 
> 
> “And the loser?” Bellamy asks.
> 
> “Queen Nia and her people will leave Arkadia and will be forbidden from attacking without cause in the future.” 
> 
> “If we lose?”
> 
> “Then the princess dies."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, my apologies for the delay in posting. Hope it's worth the wait!
> 
> Massive thanks to my wonderful beta, @griffinsbi. Part of the fight sequence at the end comes courtesy of her suggestion.

From a distance, Arkadia City is almost invisible against the waves of sand, shimmering the same way that air does when heated by a summer sun, giving the impression of something that isn’t there. Despite the flatness of the surrounding landscape, they’re within fifty miles of the city when it finally becomes clear on the horizon.

Arkadia is not beautiful, not in the way that Polis is. Polis is high walls of grey stone, and a palace of gleaming white marble with soaring towers. When she had first seen Polis, it had stood out like a shining beacon against the rolling greens of the eastern plains.

Arkadia is the opposite. Surrounding walls and castle alike are built from blocks of sandstone, non-descript beige-brown that deflects the sun’s heat and blends in with the surroundings. The castle itself squats low to the ground, sprawling like a crouched lion with the exception of the four towers that spike towards the sky. In its shadow are the homes and shops of the townspeople, none taller than a single story; the more prosperous folk have homes of the same sort of stone as the castle, while the poor make do with sundried bricks of mud.

Her heart thuds erratically in her chest as her city comes into view. From this distance it looks quiet, peaceful; there’s no outward sign that the queen of a neighbouring nation sits the throne. She expects to feel something looking upon it, nostalgic longing perhaps, but feels nothing except the certainty that it is _hers_.

“Not quite so grand as Polis,” she says to Bellamy, who rides beside her. Lexa had gifted her with a horse, a beautiful white mare named Starlight who had been groomed for battle; if she were to lead the army herself, she needed to be mounted.

“Grand in a different way,” he replies quietly. “It appears solid, immoveable, no fancy decoration to distract you from its weakness. Polis burned, you know, almost all but the palace itself turned to ash. You wouldn’t recognize it, if you were to see it now.”

She had known, but she had almost forgotten; Bellamy had spoken little of the fate of his city in the aftermath of the war. When he had, it had been in a pained sort of way, and she curses herself for bringing it up in such a flippant manner.

“‘Beauty does not a stronghold make,’” she says. “My father used to say that. My mother, despite having grown up in the castle, used to complain of its dullness, especially after traveling to other nations on affairs of business. But my father, he would go on and on about the castle’s situation atop an underground river, and the pumps that kept the cisterns full, the way the sandstone miraculously kept the corridors cool during the summer, how the simple layout made it impossible to get lost. Proud enough you’d have thought he designed it himself.”

Bellamy glances at her and smiles, perhaps in appreciation of her roundabout way of making him feel better, or perhaps at the love that colours her voice when she speaks of her father, even after all these years.

“Polis will be rebuilt,” he says, “stronger than before. Like us, it has been changed for the better by the war. You will see, when you come to visit.”

_When_ , not _if_ ; she’s still unendingly grateful that they reached this decision together, even if the details are as of yet uncertain. They’d agreed to focus only on fighting this war together for now, and worry about the logistics when Clarke had regained her crown. Likely, Bellamy would waste no time in returning to his own kingdom, though, so she planned to treasure every moment she had with him now.

“The ice queen’s flag flies from the castle,” Kane observes from Bellamy’s other side, spyglass pressed to his eye. He passes the spyglass to Clarke, and she peers through it to see flags of white slashed with pale blue, crossed swords embroidered upon it, fluttering from the turrets.

It had been what she expected to see—after all, they had come all this way because the wrong queen sat the throne—but the logic of that doesn’t stop a surge of anger from rushing through her body, temporarily darkening the edges of her vision.

“She’s certainly not trying to hide,” she says, her voice remarkably calm, as she passes the looking glass to Bellamy.

“The gates are closed,” Bellamy says after watching the castle for several moments, “the watchtowers all manned. She’s expecting us.”

“Of course she is,” Lexa says coolly, riding up on Clarke’s right. “We’ve hardly been invisible, riding through the desert in our thousands. I’m sure she’s known about us for days, if not longer.”

“Then why has she yet to acknowledge us?” Kane wonders.

“Because she has a decision to make. She can either bring the war to us, or let us bring the war to her.” Lexa turns her attention away from the desert stronghold, disinterested, and focuses instead on Clarke. “Let us set up camp. There isn’t enough time in the day for us to begin the siege tonight.” Oblivious to the way her words and commanding tone cause both Clarke and Bellamy to bristle she turns away, heeling her horse towards the Arkadian army.

“She’s right,” Bellamy sighs. “The armies are weary and could use a night of rest before engaging in battle.” Turning his attention to Clarke, he adds, “I’ll come find you after my people are settled?”

She nods, smiling as Bellamy rides away. Between both of their duties, they never have much time to spend together; but this past week, they’ve taken steps to ensure they _do_ spend as much time together as possible, even if it means sacrificing sleep.

“What’s the plan?” Raven asks when she rejoins her.

“We attack in the morning.” The words feel heavy on her tongue, drop from her lips like stone. They had been planning this for weeks, had decided on their course of action during long war meetings on their journey from the Dead Sand. But now that she’s seen Arkadia on the horizon, all she can picture is it in flames, in ruins—the way Bellamy said Polis is—and the thought makes her heart turn cold in her chest.

Arkadia was _hers_. It was her birthright. She would take whatever steps necessary to stop from seeing it fall to ruin, but at the moment there were no such steps to take. Their options were limited.

Raven obviously hears the note of regret in her voice, because she pats her consolingly on the shoulder. “Maybe this war will be easier than expected,” she says.

“I’d burn down the city if that’s what it took to get Nia off my throne,” she says, voice hard, “but I don’t want that to be my first act as queen. I don’t want to be remembered for destruction.” She clears her throat before saying, “Anyway, we’re setting up camp here for the night.”

“I’ll choose the nicest sand dune for our tent,” Raven says teasingly, and Clarke manages a smile.

She leaves Raven in charge of setting up camp for the twenty who had sailed with her from the unclaimed lands—usually they ended up camping in between the armies of Polis and Arkadia, simultaneously a part of both and of neither—and moves to settle the larger army that she’s now in charge of. It doesn’t take long—Arkadia’s army is less than a thousand strong, and they’ve moved camp enough times to know where to go without much guidance from her—and after she’s done she finds herself back on top of a dune on the western side of the camp, looking over her city.

She’s still there when Bellamy finds her some time later.

“How does it feel to return home?” he asks quietly.

“Strange,” she says with a light laugh. “I’ve been away for years, but I didn’t truly miss it until I saw Azgeda’s flag flying from the castle. Although I stopped belonging to it, it never stopped belonging to me.” Feeling self-conscious—something about being back on Arkadian soil made her more prone to poetry—she glances at Bellamy, and sees that he’s watching her with a small smile on his face. “What is it?”

“I like listening to you talk,” he says. Just that, but the words make a blush rise to her cheeks. He sinks to the sand, patting the space next to him invitingly. “Sit with me.”

They sit in comfortable silence for a time, shoulders brushing and knees overlapping, hands entwined between them. She takes comfort in Bellamy’s solid presence beside her—her chosen home, watching over her used-to-be home—in the knowledge that, in the battle that’s to come, he’ll be fighting alongside her; and that even if Arkadia ends up in ruins, her true home lays in Bellamy’s heart.

“My mother used to tell me a story,” she says quietly, “of a girl who, after being banished from her home, had lived among lions, and tamed them; how the lions had believed her to be the enemy until she brought them gifts and proved that she was a friend. Eventually they accepted her into the pride, let her run with them and hunt with them, eventually acknowledging her as their leader. According to the story, she had returned home years later riding on a lion’s back, leading the pride through the gates. I never knew whether I was supposed to sympathize with the girl or with the lions; I still don’t know whether it was a story about accomplishing things through perseverance, or one of being wary who you let into your confidences because they then have the power to overthrow you.”

She’s not sure why that story in particular popped into her head. She does know that looking upon Arkadia, knowing it to be empty of her mother, causes a deep ache to start up in her chest. She hasn’t seen or heard from her mother in years, but now she simply _misses_ her. Both for leaving Clarke to sort out this mess alone, and for not being there to welcome her home with open arms.

“My father was executed for corresponding with Queen Nia,” she adds thoughtfully, when Bellamy says nothing. “He had believed her to be a friend, so told her things that were better left private. Nia was the girl, and my father was a lion. And now the ice queen rules our pride.”

“But surely lions don’t give up so easily as that,” Bellamy says. “Any power the girl thinks she has is false, and she’s weakened by that presumption. If the lions chose to turn on her, they could tear her to pieces.”

“And we will,” she murmurs. Bellamy squeezes her hand reassuringly.

From where they’re sitting, they see the rider at the same time the horn sounds. The sound of the horn is short, more of an alert than an alarm; the rider is alone, and rides with one hand raised in a gesture of goodwill.

That doesn’t stop Bellamy from pulling her to her feet and pushing her a half-step behind him, or several guards riding to surround them.

Seeing them, the rider turns his horse in their direction. They wait while he rides towards them, before dismounting and walking the last of the distance.

“I come bearing a message from Queen Nia of Azgeda and Arkadia,” he proclaims formally, and his words make Clarke’s hackles rise. “She wishes to speak of a truce. Will you take me to your leaders?”

“You’re looking at them,” Bellamy says tightly, jaw squared and eyes narrowed. “King Bellamy and Polis and Princess Clarke of Arkadia, at your service.”

“So she does live,” the man says softly, eyes on Clarke, and Bellamy steps in front of her protectively.

“And she will continue to do so,” he growls fiercely. “Now, anything Queen Nia has told you to say can be said directly to us.”

“The queen recognizes that your force and Azgeda’s are evenly matched,” the man says calmly, “and doesn’t wish to see a war that would result in thousands of deaths. But she does not wish to give up her throne.”

“It’s not hers,” Clarke snaps.

“It is now,” the man replies. “She took it as spoils of war.”

“Unprovoked war.”

The man shrugs. “The laws say nothing about the cause of war, only that its spoils belong to the victor.” Bellamy places a hand on Clarke’s chest to hold her in place, correctly interpreting her stiffness as a desire to attack the messenger; the man continues on as if he’s said nothing controversial. “Queen Nia proposes a swordfight between a champion of her choosing and a champion of yours. Winner takes the throne.”

“And the loser?” Bellamy asks.

“Queen Nia and her people will leave Arkadia and will be forbidden from attacking without cause in the future.”

“If we lose?”

“Then the princess dies. Queen Nia can’t have anyone of the royal blood left to challenge her rule.”

“Absolutely not,” Bellamy snaps, as Clarke opens her mouth to agree to the deal.

“Bellamy—” Clarke begins and he turns towards her, eyes heated, jaw stubborn.

“It’s probably a trap, Clarke,” he says quietly, so as not to be overheard; even his lowered tone is filled with steely determination. “And even if it isn’t, we can’t risk you. It’s too dangerous.”

“More dangerous than asking thousands of our people to die for us?” she asks. “Any of us—including you and me—could die in trying to take the city by force.”

“I won’t let that happen. I won’t let you die.” The words are forceful, desperate. A rush of love for him surges through her, along with a twinge of annoyance.

“You don’t get to decide that, Bellamy, and you don’t get to decide this, either;” she reminds him. “You and Polis’ army are here to support _me_ , remember. This is my war.”

“A war you wouldn’t be able to fight without my help,” he retorts.

He’s right—she wouldn’t have gotten this far without him—but she refuses to back down. What results is an impasse, a frozen staring match, he standing with his arms crossed in front of his chest and she with her hands on her hips. His lips are drawn in a thin line, his brow furrowed, his eyes darker than she’s ever seen them.

“I’ve been told not to return to the castle until I’ve stated the terms of the truce,” the messenger says placidly, breaking the silence. When Clarke and Bellamy reluctantly turn to look at him, he states, “The queen will give you two days to make your decision. During that time, neither side will attack the other. Should you choose to agree to her terms, the princess and her champion and no more than two others will ride to the city. Should you not send such a reply within the next forty-eight hours, she will attack this camp.”

“If she attacks us, she will lose,” Bellamy says.

“Perhaps so. Or perhaps you’ve underestimated her.” The man shrugs again, as if it’s of no consequence to him. “Regardless, such a battle would be bloody and would cause both sides many losses. Deaths that could be avoided. The queen trusts that you’ll make the right decision.” He bows to them—shallow enough that it could be construed as demeaning—and turns his horse back towards the city.

They watch him go, and it’s only after he’s disappeared into the sand that Bellamy turns to her. His jaw is still clenched, his eyes hard. “Clarke, don’t tell me you’re considering this.”

“It’s the best way,” she tells him.

“Only if you assume the queen fights fair, which we both know she won’t.” Bellamy takes a deep breath. “We have the upper hand, here. We shouldn’t let Nia dictate the next move.”

“What do you suggest, then?”

“That we attack. Tomorrow, as was the plan.”

“She’ll be expecting us.”

“She was always going to be expecting us.”

“Tell me—if anyone else’s life but my own hung in the balance, would you be hesitating right now?”

Bellamy’s mouth drops open, but no words come out.

“If we go to war,” she tells him quietly, “people will die. _Your_ people, the ones you’re sworn to protect. You promised yourself that you wouldn’t choose me over them.”

“I also acknowledged that I wouldn’t be able to keep that promise.” His voice is bleak, weak, pained. Her heart goes out to him, but she continues on ruthlessly:

“As king of Polis, it’s your duty to make the decision that will harm the least amount of people. Just as it’s my duty to do the same. You _know_ what our only choice is.”

“If she kills you, this will all have been for nothing.”

“Nothing’s ever for nothing. And besides—we know it’s likely to be a trap. We can prepare accordingly.”

“Maybe there’s another way.”

“Maybe,” she says, “and if there is, you have two days to find it. I’m open to suggestions.” She smiles at him sadly, before leaving him staring out over the desert and heading back into camp.

◊◊◊

The attack comes that night. They have guards around the camp, of course, but they only serve to give less than a minute’s warning; the war horns blow, jolting Clarke from her sleep, and by the time she’s jumped from her blankets, pulled on her clothes, strapped daggers to her arms, and stepped out into the night, the camp is already swarming.

Most of the Azgedan army is mounted on giant warhorses, trampling over tents and people; several tents have caught on fire in the madness and the scene is illuminated by an eerie orange glow. Some people are fighting, swords drawn and slashing, but most run or stand paralyzed beneath the weight of this unexpected threat.

She finds herself one of the latter. Her sleep-filled mind refuses to make sense of the scene in front of her and she’s still standing motionless in front of the tent when Raven emerges, bow and quiver slung over her shoulder.

“Are you out of your mind?” Raven snaps. “They’re here for _you_ , Clarke!” Grasping Clarke’s arm, she manages to drag her several paces away before Clarke snaps to her senses and begins to struggle.

“Stop! Raven, stop!”

Raven drops her arm with clear reluctance. “We need to get you out of here,” she protests weakly.

“I’m not going anywhere. This is _my_ army being attacked. It’s my duty to lead them.”

“Your duty to get yourself killed, you mean,” Raven mutters without any real heat.

“You and Bellamy both,” Clarke says irritably, already moving towards where her horse is tied up, “seem to think I’m incapable of keeping myself alive.”

“I know as well as anyone just how capable you are,” Raven says, “but you could be the greatest fighter in the world and still not stand a chance when _an entire army_ is out to kill you. Think logically, Clarke.”

She pauses for just a moment to acknowledge Raven’s words, to accept that her immediate reaction is not well thought out, before continuing on. “I’ll stay as safe as possible, but I refuse to run and hide.”

“And how do you plan on staying ‘as safe as possible’?” Raven asks, sounding skeptical.

“I won’t fight,” Clarke says reasonably. “I just…I can’t let my people fight for me without me. I need them to see me, to know that I’m still here for them.”

Raven regards her with narrowed eyes, before nodding. “In that case, I’m coming with you. _Someone_ needs to keep an eye on you.”

“Let’s go, then.” It would be a waste of time to argue further; Raven’s eyebrows raise at her agreeable tone, but she says nothing as she follows Clarke.

Starlight is tied up next to some other horses, most of which are pawing at the ground or snorting in agitation. Hurriedly, Clarke throws a saddle over the mare’s back, cinching it under her belly, before sliding reins and bridle over the horse’s face. Once done, she gracefully mounts Starlight, while Raven scrambles up behind her.

Her horse had been trained for war, but not in the same way that the Ice Nation’s had. Starlight doesn’t shy away from the sounds of battle, from the smoke and heat of fire, but neither does she charge forward, bit between her teeth. At Clarke’s urging, she trots between the tents, ears flat against her head.

There’s not much she can do to help, not without breaking her promise to Raven; she realizes that almost immediately. Most of the skirmishes take place in isolated groups, her people, some still in their nightclothes, desperately fighting off the bigger and better-armed warriors. Her only weapons are her daggers, useless anyway; Raven sits side-saddle behind her, calmly loosing arrows with incredible precision.

They can’t stay in any one place for long, not long enough to make a true difference. As soon as they’re seen and recognized, she turns, vanishing into the shadows before she can be pursued.

“For Arkadia!” she cries as she rides. “Fight hard for your kingdom! Fight proud! We will not fall!”

More often than not, her voice is lost among the clash of blades, shouts and cries. But those that do hear her stand taller, fight with renewed vigour. Her presence puts strength into them, as she had known it would.

She spares brief moments of thought for Polis’ army, before turning her mind back to the matter at hand. Bellamy and his army were capable of taking care of themselves.

“Clarke!” Raven shouts, and then screams. Clarke twists around in her saddle, unbalances and has to grab onto the reins to avoid falling out of her seat.

An arrow is sticking out of Raven’s lower back, still quivering with the force of impact. Behind them, the Ice Nation shooter is charging towards them, slinging his bow over his shoulder and reaching for a sword instead. A bone mask covers the lower half of his face, and his eyes glint in the firelight.

One of her daggers flies from her hand, spins through the air to take the warrior in the throat. His horse continues running, but his hands have left the reins; they reach for his neck, an expression of surprise on his face, before he topples to the side.

“Good aim,” Raven says. Her voice is laced with pain, and weaker than Clarke would like.

“Hold on tight,” she directs, and hardly waits until she feels Raven’s hands close around her waist before she kicks her heels into the side of her horse.

Raven’s laboured breathing is harsh in her ears as she pushes Starlight faster, relying on the horse’s instincts to get them around obstructions and over fallen bodies. She doesn’t know where she’s taking them, only that she needs to get Raven out of danger, wherever that might be.

Only minutes later, a horn sounds, shivering on the night air, ringing like a crystalline wind. She’s only vaguely aware of the noise as she slides off Starlight’s back, puts one arm around Raven’s back and the other under her legs and half-carries her, half-drops her to the ground.

“Raven,” she says. The arrow is buried in her back, just to the side of her hip, and black blood is already pulsating out around the entry hole.

“Leave me,” Raven grits out between clenched teeth. “You can’t stay here. They’ll find you. They’ll kill you.”

“They’re leaving,” Clarke says. She knows it to be true, even before she looks around to verify her words. The horn had been to sound the retreat, although she’s not sure why. At the moment, she can’t quite bring herself to care. “We need to—”

Do what? They can hardly stay here, not when the air is choked with smoke, flames licking at the sky, the smell of burnt canvas and burnt flesh. But moving Raven would risk making her injury worse, and so she hesitates.

Raven makes the decision for her, gripping Clarke’s shoulder and pulling herself up into a sitting position, and then pushing herself to her feet. A small groan is the only indication of the pain she must be feeling, and alarm spikes through Clarke.

“Raven, you shouldn’t move,” she says.

“Can’t stay here,” Raven grunts. “You can’t move me on your own, and you won’t leave me. So. Let’s go.” Without waiting for Clarke, she begins staggering forward, her right leg dragging through the sand behind her.

Clarke takes a couple of quick steps to catch up to her, but only to put a supporting arm around Raven’s waist. She knows when arguing with her friend was useless. Raven was as stubborn as an ox, and just as strong when she wished to be.

They don’t make it very far before two familiar shapes round the corner and run towards them.

“Monty, Jasper,” Clarke breathes out in relief. “Thank the gods. We need to—”

Without warning, without so much as a sound, Raven collapses, her weight pulling an unsuspecting Clarke to the ground with her. Jasper leaps forward, not quite in time to catch her.

“That doesn’t look good,” he says, eyes wide as they land on the arrow sticking out of Raven’s back, the blood that soaks the clothing around it. His own arm is wrapped in a blood-soaked, hastily tied bandage.

“It’s not,” Clarke says tightly. She has her fingers to Raven’s pulse, her other hand lifting the lids on Raven’s eyes to judge her response. Raven is out cold, her heartbeat weak and erratic. “We need to—”

“Get her somewhere safe,” Monty breaks in. “We’ll take care of her, Clarke. You have other things to do.”

Other things? It takes her a moment to remember what could possibly be more important than staying here and watching over Raven, making sure she got the care she needed. But she is princess of Arkadia, and her people had just been viciously and unsuspectingly attacked by an enemy, and it was her duty above all to look over them in any way she could.

“Thank you,” she says.

She watches as Monty and Jasper lift Raven between them, easily carrying her limp form. She waits until they round the corner again, before striding off with purpose in the other direction.

◊◊◊

When the sun rises in the east, it lights up a camp that’s in shambles. Trampled tents, smoke still wavering towards the sky from fires that had only recently been put out. A thundering silence hovers in the air, voices and cries filtering through as though muffled. People shuffle wearily about, taking the first steps towards repairing the damage. She had spent most of the night taking care of the injured, and soon they would need her attention again, but it can wait a moment more.

For now, she stands with Bellamy in the centre of camp, evaluating the damage.

“So much for a truce,” Bellamy snarls.

“Queen Nia didn’t wish to take any chances,” Clarke replies, voice calm despite the anger that’s coursing through her blood. “Practical move on her part. Catch us by surprise. Attack before she could be attacked.”

“She can’t seriously think that we’d agree to her deal now, though.”

“She can,” Clarke says, her voice still that distant calm, like it belongs to someone else, “because we will.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s still our only option, the one that makes the most sense. Queen Nia just proved that she’s not trustworthy, that she’ll break the rules. So what? We already knew that.”

“Walking into a trap that you know is a trap doesn’t stop it from _being_ a trap, Clarke,” Bellamy growls. “We could attempt to plan for every eventuality, and still have her pull the rug out from under us. The queen wants you dead, and won’t let something as small as honour come in the way of her achieving that. As demonstrated by the attack last night.”

“We have no choice. Look at our army, Bellamy. The plan was to attack Arkadia this morning, and most of them don’t even have enough energy to stumble to their beds.” This is true; of the people in their field of vision, several are standing still, swaying on their feet, while others have collapsed in the sand or are staring blankly off into space.

“We’ve lost entirely every bit of surprise we might have had, and we’ve lost the advantage of having numbers; we would have to allow our soldiers to recover adequately to fight, and in that time nothing’s stopping Nia from attacking us again. We no longer have the upper hand, which I’m sure was her intention. Our only hope is to end this war in a trial by combat, without any other fighting.”

Bellamy glowers but says nothing, and she knows that he agrees with her, if reluctantly.

“Besides,” Clarke says in an attempt to mollify him, “nothing says that _we_ have to play by the rules, either.”

“What do you suggest?” His voice is wary, but at least he’s no longer completely closed to the idea.

“Play the same game Nia’s no doubt hoping to play. I go to Arkadia with my champion and two others, and we find a way to kill her.”

“She’ll be expecting that.”

“Probably. But so will we.” She smiles at him, but he doesn’t return it. “I have confidence that we can outsmart the ice queen.”

“I wish I felt the same.” He sounds less angry than considering, and thinks it over for a few moments before nodding his head decisively. “You may convince me to agree with this plan, but on one condition: I go as your champion.”

“What? No!” Her satisfaction at getting through to him quickly curdles into horror.

“I’ll be in no more danger than you yourself,” he says calmly. “Less, if things go according to plan.”

He’s boxed her in nicely; any argument against him could only be turned around on her. She glowers, and he smiles infuriatingly.

“Fine,” she grumbles, knowing she sounds petulant and unable to make herself care.

“This way we’ll both have something worth fighting for,” he murmurs, and she knows what he means: he would do everything in his power to defeat the queen’s champion if it meant keeping Clarke alive, and she would do everything in her power to destroy the queen before it came down to a fight to the death.

And it’s only fair, she allows, that they fight this battle together.

“Who are the other two we bring with us?” Bellamy asks, but before she can consider, Jasper comes running up.

Like all of them, he’s worse for wear from the attack the night before, but in better shape than many: his skin is reddened from being too near one of the fires, and he still wears a bandage around his left arm, although it’s been changed since the night before. He’s breathless, his eyes wide with worry.

“Clarke, you need to come with me,” he pants. “It’s Raven.”

The first flutters of panic start low in her belly. “What’s wrong?” she asks, and when Jasper doesn’t answer the panic travels up to her throat.

Jasper takes her to the tent that they had hastily erected as an infirmary. Raven is lying on her stomach where she had left her several hours ago, bandage around the arrow shaft in her lower back drenched with black blood and tears trickling down her face. When she sees Clarke her eyes flutter closed, not in relief but in pain.

“I can’t feel my legs,” she whispers.

“It’s fine,” Clarke reassures her, even though her stomach feels like it’s dropped out of her body and her thoughts are buzzing. “It’ll be fine, it’s—it’s normal—”

“Don’t lie to me, Clarke,” Raven says, her voice holding an echo of her usual attitude. She laughs, hollowly. “I may not be a healer, but I know that losing feeling in your limbs is never a good sign.”

“Not a good sign,” Clarke admits, “but not necessarily a bad one. Here, let me take another look at it. Your bandages need changing, anyway.”

She attempts to keep her hands from shaking as she gently unwraps Raven’s bandages, being careful not to jostle the arrow sticking out of her skin. If she’s being honest with herself, she doesn’t know what to look for, or what she could possibly do to help; the reason for an arrow in the back leading to numbness in the legs was lost to her.

Peeling the last of the bandage away, she barely manages to stifle a gasp; the skin around the arrow wound, where it’s not stained with blood, is a deep, violent purple. The bruise extends across much of Raven’s lower back and almost as high as her ribcage on her right side.

“That can’t be good,” she mutters before she can think to keep her mouth shut, gently prodding the skin with her fingertips.

Raven jerks, either at her words or at the pressure of her touch, twists a little, and then yelps in pain. “What is it?” she demands, sounding slightly out of breath.

“I—um—does it hurt when I do this?”

“Do what?” Raven asks, and Clarke’s heart sinks.

“Never mind,” she says quickly, and then takes a deep breath. “I—I think we need to try to get the arrow out.” It couldn’t hurt—or at least, she didn’t think it could, not when Raven couldn’t feel anything anyway—and there was a slight possibility it might help.

“Well, I wasn’t planning on having it in there for the rest of my life, anyway,” Raven says, a false show of bravado. “Do you what you need to. Just…quickly, please.” There’s a slight tremble in her voice. Clarke can’t blame her.

“Alright. This might hurt.” Or it might not, which scares Clarke even more. Taking another breath, pushing the worried thoughts from her mind, she wraps her hands around the bloody arrow shaft and, with all the force she can manage, pulls it up and free of Raven’s flesh.

It doesn’t come cleanly. There’s a tug as it catches on muscle, a sickening sound as it tears through, leaving an even bigger hole in Raven’s back. Raven screams.

“Sorry, I’m sorry,” Clarke pants, putting the arrow down to the side and leaning forward to examine the wound more closely.

“At least—I felt—that pain,” Raven grinds out between clenched teeth. “That counts for something—doesn’t it?”

“I hope so,” Clarke murmurs, too focused on the wound to prevaricate. Black blood is pulsing out of it, spilling over the skin, and she hastily calls for Jasper, who had been hovering nearby, to fetch some brandy. When he returns, she splashes the liquid over the wound—they kept some on hand for just that purpose; it was too strong for drinking—before covering the area with bandages.

“That’s all I can do for now,” she says. “I’ll come check on you again tonight, unless you send for me for another reason.”

“Clarke, wait,” Raven says as she’s standing to go. “What—what happens next?”

She knows Raven isn’t talking about her injury or the lack of feeling in her legs, but in terms of the war. So she hesitates before answering, before ultimately deciding to tell Raven the truth.

“The queen has issued a challenge to the death to settle the matter of the crown,” she says wearily. “Tomorrow, I plan to accept.”

“And let her kill you?”

“Not if things go according to plan.” She finds the energy for a small smile. “If things go according to plan, it is she who will die.”

For a moment, she thinks Raven is going to argue; ultimately, she either doesn’t have the energy or decides to trust Clarke. “You better not be wrong,” she says. “If you are, I’ll kill you myself.”

Her attempted humour doesn’t escape Clarke, and she bends over to run her fingers gently over Raven’s head. “Try to get some rest,” she says, and thinks she hears a muttered “As if I had a choice” from behind her as she leaves the tent.

◊◊◊

When the sun reaches its zenith the next day, she and Bellamy—along with Kane and Miller, who had been chosen as their “others”—leave the camp for the city of Arkadia. The four of them had talked at length the evening before, trying to imagine the shape Nia’s betrayal might take and how they could best counter it, before eventually deciding that they would just have to keep their eyes open for any opportunities that could be taken.

Bellamy, predictably, had not been remotely pleased with this course of action. “So your plan is no plan at all,” he had exploded. “You wish to march into Arkadia and _hope_ that things unfold in a favourable way?”

There’s still a sour expression on his face as they ride through the desert, a glower that even her most cajoling words are unable to lift.

Evidently, the queen had had someone watching for them, because the gates to the city swing open as they approach, admitting them to its paved streets.

Clarke slows her horse down to a walk, and the others follow suite. She finds herself staring at the buildings—so different in architecture from Polis; here, everything was of beige sandstone with wide windows, low to the ground and open format to allow every hint of a breeze into the interior—and nostalgia sweeps over her. She had ridden through these streets before, usually in a procession behind her mother and father, riding in a shaded palanquin or, once, on the back of her very own horse; once, she and Wells had borrowed clothes from one of the stablehands and gone out to explore the city the way the commonfolk did. No one had recognized them.

While she looks around, reminiscing, Bellamy has other concerns on his mind: “Eyes sharp,” he barks. “Nia could choose to attack us at any time.”

“She won’t in the streets,” Clarke says absentmindedly.

“How can you be sure?”

“Because if she’s going to betray us, it won’t be in a place where others might witness. It could potentially destabilize her rule. If she plans to betray us, she’ll do everything she can to make it look like an accident, or fair play.”

“We can’t be sure of that,” Bellamy says, but he sounds slightly less on edge.

“True,” she says, just to ease him. “Best to stay sharp just in case.”

The first sight of the castle up close steals her breath. It’s not grand or majestic, but it dominates the skyline just the same. It’s _solid_ looking, the foundation upon which she herself was built.

And from the gates, from every tower, flies the Azgedan queen’s flag.

The gate swings open as they approach, and a woman waits to greet them on the other side. She gives them a cursory bow, just low enough to not be considered insulting.

“Clarke Griffin,” she says coolly, not even bothering with the honorific, not even sparing a glance for her companions. “Her Majesty has been expecting you. But first, I must ask you to leave all your weapons at the gate. You understand.”

“Even my sword?” Bellamy protests. “I need it to fight.”

“It will be returned to you before the duel. Now, please.” She watches as they toss their weapons to the ground, and then quickly searches them all for anything hidden before allowing that they are unarmed. “Follow me,” she says, once their weapons have been gathered and taken inside the watchtower.

They are taken through the castle’s sweeping hallways to a courtyard in the centre of the building. The courtyard is filled with desert flowers, bursting with life despite the heat of the summer. Part of her is glad to see that this, at least, has not been neglected under Nia’s reign; part of her is indignant at the idea of Nia walking among the gardens that her mother had cultivated.

For a short time they’re left alone, and she takes the opportunity to walk around the small space, to breathe in the air that doesn’t quite smell of the desert. She had spent hours playing in this garden when she was younger, or reading or drawing among the plants. The others with her don’t say anything, know better than to interrupt her reverie. Bellamy, for his part, stands at attention, every line in his body speaking of tension, looking for possible threats behind the plants, down the paths, and probably from the open sky.

Nia doesn’t leave them waiting for long; before a handful of minutes have passed she sweeps into the courtyard wearing a gown of flowing blue and silver, lace cap over her long, greying hair. Two guards come before her, and behind her is a hulking man, brown hair tied at his nape with a leather cord and a violent scar running down the side of his face. He seems to saunter as he walks, sword strapped to his hip as naturally as if he was born with it there, eyes cool blue and piercing. This must be her champion, and Clarke can’t help but cast a worried look at Bellamy; the queen’s champion is a little bit taller, definitely stronger, and an air of competence and danger radiates off of him.

“Queen Nia of Azgeda,” Kane says, sweeping a bow, managing to be polite while refusing the queen her stolen title. Miller follows suite and then Bellamy, reluctantly and jerkily; Clarke, however, does not. She refuses to bow to this woman who stole her crown and killed her mother.

Her refusal does not go unnoticed; the queen quirks an eyebrow at her, the corner of her mouth twitching ever so slightly. “Princess Clarke,” she says, her voice a low drawl. “It’s a…pleasure.”

“Is it?” Clarke snaps, before heeding the warning look Kane throws in her direction. But she will not—cannot—give the queen the courtesy that custom demands, and so shifts the focus to the large warrior behind her. “This is your champion, I presume?”

“Prince Roan,” the queen says, her voice still that drawl but with a hint of possessiveness. “My son.”

“You would ask your son to participate in the fight to the death on your behalf? That hardly seems…motherly.”

“And yet you ask your betrothed to do the same,” the queen points out, correctly guessing Bellamy’s identity and purpose. “It seems we both have much riding on the outcome of this duel.”

“Speaking of the duel,” Bellamy breaks in, his voice lower than usual, tight the way it is when he’s trying to rein in his anger. “When does it begin?”

The queen makes a great show of considering, tapping her finger to her mouth before glancing up at the sky. “How about an hour before sunset?” she finally suggests. “That should give you a couple of hours to prepare. And for word of the battle to get out. We must have spectators.”

If possible, Bellamy grows even tenser at her words. Clarke knows what he’s thinking: a couple of hours gives Nia more time to betray them, if that is indeed what she plans to do. “What about our weapons?” he asks.

“They will be returned to you shortly before the duel.” Nia’s smile is thin and sharp. “You won’t be needing them before then.”

“In what ways are we supposed to prepare, then?”

“Mentally?” Nia suggests, words honeyed. “I am not a fool, your Majesty. I will not allow you to run unsupervised around my castle with a weapon in hand.”

“ _My_ castle,” Clarke grinds out.

Nia arches a cool eyebrow at her. “I think you’ll find you’re mistaken,” she says. “The throne is mine. The servants are mine. The knights guarding the walls are mine. The warriors are mine, the supplies are mine, and you’ll discover, if you ask, that the people are mine as well. So what exactly here is _yours_?”

“It’s mine by birthright.”

“Kings and queens will fall,” Nia singsongs in a voice like wind chimes. “Only strength perseveres.”

A restraining hand lands on Clarke’s arm, and she realizes that she’s taken a threatening step towards the ice queen, who watches her with a half-smile on her lips. Behind her, Roan twirls a sword from hand to hand, casually.

“Leave it,” Miller mutters in her ear. Logic wins out over ire, and she reluctantly steps back. Something that might be disappointment flutters across Nia’s face—she had wanted Clarke to attack her, wanted a reason to bypass the necessity of the fight and kill Clarke outright.

“We’ll see, then,” she says in a careful, measured tone, “whose strength is true and whose is only a front.”

“We will,” Nia replies in a voice that suggests she already knows. That smug half-smile is back on her face. “Later. For the moment, Gertrude can take you to a room where you can…prepare.”

A woman, lean and bony and wearing servant’s grey, steps from the shadows. “Follow me,” she says. Nia has already turned away from them, attention fully on Roan, who plays with his sword; an obvious and insulting dismissal.

They’re taken to a windowless room that is empty with the exception of a couple of chairs and a table that’s low to the ground. The door closes behind them, and an outside lock clicks. Immediately, Bellamy’s at the door, struggling to get it open; it doesn’t budge. In frustration, he kicks it, twice.

“What’s the plan now?” he asks grimly. “Nia has us exactly where she wants us.”

“We wait,” Clarke says, trying her best to sound calm. “We have no other choice.”

“She knew we’d try to cheat.”

“Or she just planned for every possibility. Nia’s a usurper and a murderer, but no one ever said she was a fool.”

Bellamy glares at her. “I knew this was a bad idea,” he growls. “We’re locked in a room, weaponless, at the mercy of the woman who killed your mother.”

“I’m well aware,” she snaps back, frustrated by his continued pessimism. “I told you before and I’ll remind you again _—we didn’t have a choice_. Nia had already trapped us long before she put us in this room.”

“What are we supposed to do, then?” Bellamy demands. “Play by her rules? Let her drag us around by the nose?”

“Unless you have a better idea,” she says tiredly, “yes.”

He doesn’t. Eventually, the scowl drops off his face to be replaced by a familiar look of determination. “I won’t let us die here,” he mutters.

Bellamy paces the room for much of the time they’re left waiting there—ignoring Clarke’s pleas to sit down and conserve his energy---throwing glances at the locked door every few moments as if something has changed. He’s tensed as if expecting an attack—Clarke admits that she too is worried about being confronted while weaponless, but maintains her composure for Bellamy’s sake—but one never comes.

She tries not to think of the upcoming duel. It seems more and more likely that Nia will try to pull her tricks during the fight itself. And while Bellamy may be one of the best knights in Polis—he had said so himself, and he wasn’t the type to brag—Roan looked fierce and if he had his mother’s help, the fight would be difficult for Bellamy to win.

She had been the one to bring him here, to allow him to risk his life for her despite their vows. If he died today, it would be her fault. If he died today, part of her would die with him.

He wouldn’t die. He mustn’t.

Her hands are clasped tight in her lap, white-knuckled, her feet crossed at the ankles. She is the very picture of stillness, while Bellamy is constantly in motion: even with her eyes focused unseeingly on the geometric patterns of the carpet, she can feel him moving behind her, hear the scuffle of his tread, his harsh breathing.

No one speaks. There’s nothing for them to say, nothing more for them to plan; with no cards in their hand, they’ve no choice but to hope for an opportunity to present itself.

After some hours have passed—her throat has long since gone dry with thirst, and there’s nothing to be had of food or drink in the room; a tactic of Nia’s, she suspects, to make them as uncomfortable as possible prior to the fight—there’s a sharp rap on the door before it opens.

The manservant on the other side sweeps them a perfunctory bow before saying, “Her eminence the queen sent me for you. They’re ready.”

“Her eminence,” Bellamy mutters under his breath, pushing past the servant into the hallway. Clarke follows close on his heels.

“This way,” the man says, ignoring Bellamy completely. They follow him down the hallway, past wide windows and closed doors, and Clarke sees her opportunity in the form of a man in silk clothes who strides through the hallways with purpose, chest puffed out with self-importance.

The man’s coat is crumpled up around his waist, forgotten to be pulled down smoothly over his hips. For this reason only is the bone-handle of the knife tucked into the belt visible to her, presented to her like a gift.

She won’t let this opportunity go to waste; before the moment passes, she bumps into the man, pretending a moment of clumsiness. He catches her awkwardly about the shoulders as she apologizes profusely, her hand snaking between them and deftly plucking the knife from his belt. Seconds later, the knife has vanished up her left sleeve and she apologizes once again before backing away.

The man doesn’t notice anything amiss. There’s a scowl on his face as she stammers out another apology, a curl to his lip as he continues on his way without a word.

“Clumsy,” she says, in response to Bellamy’s questioning glance. “Must be the nerves.”

“ _You’re_ nervous,” he says dryly.

“Remember,” she tells him, “if you die, I die.”

“As if I could forget,” he mutters. She squeezes his hand, quickly, before letting it drop.

Outside the castle’s gate, a covered palanquin is waiting to bear them to the city square, where the duel is to take place. She pulls back a corner of the curtain, so she can see outside without being seen. The dusty streets are already lined with people, eagerly or anxiously awaiting the outcome. They are strangely silent, although their eyes follow their palanquin as it passes. No cheers arise, not even when one or two catch sight of her and point her out to her neighbours.

It occurs to her for the first time that maybe Nia hadn’t been exaggerating when she’d said earlier that the people were hers, that maybe the people don’t want to see Arkadian blood on the throne, or at the very least don’t care. The game of thrones was above the heads of those who sought only to put food on their tables each night. It makes her indignant, in a way, that they don’t care if she lives or dies, and also glad that they had chosen to end it this way, rather than bringing a war to the streets of Arkadia.

The palanquin is lowered to the ground at the edge of the square, and they step out into the burning heat of the summer sun, the dust and dryness of the city streets. The ground of the square is hard-packed sand, swept smooth and clean in preparation for the fight. Market stalls have been cleared out of the way, an arena cordoned off in the middle of the square.

People are packed into the area, crowding the edges of the arena, standing on the gallows or sitting on rooftops; thousands of people who await—eagerly or not—the outcome of the future of their kingdom.

Nia is sitting in the chair atop the dais where the queen or king usually sits in judgement during executions. Her presumption makes Clarke’s blood boil, the very way she sits with her back and neck held straight, her legs primly crossed, as if she belongs there. Beside her, Roan stands, one hand resting casually on the hilt of his sword. His eyes sweep the crowd, landing on them; he bends down to whisper something in Nia’s ear, and she nods before gracefully rising to her feet.

“King Bellamy of Polis,” she proclaims, voice loud and clear, “I hear you have come to answer my challenge?” By ignoring Clarke’s presence completely, she’s also able to avoid calling her by her title: a neat sort of insult.

“I have,” Bellamy replies, stepping forward, one hand reassuringly on Clarke’s arm.

“The terms of the battle are as follows,” Nia says, for the benefit of the crowd. “You and my son, Prince Roan of Azgeda, will partake in a fight to the death in this arena. You are each allowed one weapon, and are forbidden aid of any sort. The fight will not end until there is a champion. If you win the duel, I will leave Arkadia and won’t return for as long as I shall live; neither shall my armies, or any blood of my blood. If Prince Roan wins, then the throne of Arkadia is mine and Clarke Griffin’s life is forfeit. Do you agree to these terms?”

“I do.” Bellamy’s voice is calm, but his hand holds Clarke’s arm in a vise-like grip.

“Then step forward and meet Prince Roan in the centre of the square. Your sword will be brought to you,” she adds, just as Bellamy opens his mouth to ask.

He squeezes her arm once more, turns to look at her with a twisted attempt at a smile on his face. “I’ll be alright,” he whispers, and she can’t respond because her heart is in her throat, fluttering wildly; and even if she could speak, she doesn’t know what words she could possibly say in this moment.

So she only leans forward and up, pressing a gentle kiss to his lips before extricating her arm from his grip. He nods, his eyes meeting hers for a moment longer before he turns and begins the walk alone to the centre of the arena.

He’ll be alright. She repeats the words until she believes them, lips wordlessly forming the shapes of the vowels.

Roan meets him there, and a squire comes running out, Bellamy’s sword, still in its sheath, held carefully in his hands. Taking the sword from him, Bellamy runs his hands up and down the soft leather, exposes a foot of the blade, before nodding and strapping it to his hip.

“Weapons out,” Nia calls, and there’s two simultaneous hisses as both swords are drawn. “At stance…you may begin.”

Without meaning to, Clarke realizes she has pulled both Kane and Miller towards her, holding onto their arms with a death grip. All of her attention is focused on the two men who stand alone on the battlefield, beginning their dance.

It starts slow, lithe steps, graceful swaying, exploratory jabs and feints, no blade coming close to touching skin. There’s an invisible wall between them, keeping a foot of careful space between them, neither wanting to be the one to close the distance. For a moment, she’s able to appreciate the beauty of the fight, the obvious skill of the two duelists, how the sunlight refracts brilliantly off of flashing blades that arc through the air like rainbows.

Eventually, it’s Bellamy who makes the first move, and Nia’s plan is made suddenly, startlingly, painfully clear. He darts in, fast and smooth, under Roan’s tentative slash, and his blade comes up hard into Roan’s ribs. A blow that, under any other circumstances, would be devastating. Should almost guarantee him the match.

Except instead of piercing flesh, his blade snaps, separates cleanly from the hilt and falls spinning to the sand. Left holding only the leather-wrapped and gem-encrusted hilt of his sword, Bellamy is forced to stumble back, feet tripping over each other in his haste to get out of the reach of Roan’s own blade.

He manages to stay standing, barely, and brings his arms up to block his chest and neck, but he’s at an unstable disadvantage. Roan, three inches taller and forty pounds heavier, stalks towards him, teeth flashing in a feral grin that’s as sharp as his sword.

“Devilspawn,” Clarke breathes, the words hissing out through a blockage in her throat. Icy rage curdles inside her, overpowering her panic at seeing Bellamy defenseless and moments away from death.

Bellamy doesn’t give up—of course he doesn’t; he launches himself at Roan, ducking under the outstretched sword to wrap his hands around the other man’s neck. Roan staggers back a step, perhaps surprised at the force of Bellamy’s attack, before catching himself. Without dropping his sword, he wraps his arms around Bellamy’s back and drags him to the ground.

“He’ll crush him,” Miller says, and Clarke’s incapable of saying anything at all; her nails are digging into Kane and Miller’s arms with enough force that she thinks she must be drawing blood.

Sand is kicked up into the air, obscuring parts of the fight—which now resembles a street brawl—from view. When it settles, Roan is crouched over Bellamy, left hand on his throat while his right holds his sword casually out to the side, and Bellamy’s hands are scrabbling uselessly for purchase on Roan’s forearms.

Suddenly the desert air is too hot and dry, scorching her lungs and making it impossible to breathe. Bellamy’s face is turning red and she feels as he feels, the ghost of fingers closing around her neck. “Please,” she whispers with no sound, a mere opening and closing of her lips.

Maybe Bellamy somehow hears her, or maybe from deep inside himself he finds a hidden reservoir of strength; his knee comes up between Roan’s legs, his hands wrap around his wrists, and he pushes the suddenly boneless man off of him and scrambles away, dragging air into his lungs.

Roan is back on his feet within seconds and Bellamy is listing sideways. His hands come up once again in a defensive gesture, arms in front of his face and neck as Roan stalks towards him. He takes a step backward, almost stumbles before catching himself.

Bellamy won’t give up—he won’t ever give up, not if her life is on the line—but she can see that the fight has gone out of him. His eyes flicker away from Roan to her, only for a brief moment, but she sees the look on his face and she _knows_. Something cold and sharp settles in her stomach, cuts into her bones.

She has no choice.

Her gaze shifts from the prince and her king to the queen who sits atop the dais, smug smile on her lips; her left hand drops from Miller’s arm and the knife slides from her sleeve into her palm.

The following moments seem to stretch out and slow, flowing like honey, like a rain-starved river or clouds across a windless sky: she feels the infinitesimal seconds between each heartbeat, and in those fractured moments she moves.

In her peripheral vision she sees Roan’s sword, aimed arrow-straight at Bellamy’s throat, and Bellamy’s flesh and bone arms raised to block it; the rest of her attention is focused on Nia, who gleefully watches as her son begins the thrust that will end Bellamy’s life. Erroneously, Nia pays no mind to Clarke, who stands with anger thrumming through her muscles, her back as straight as Roan’s sword, a tiny and insignificant blade clutched in her fist.

In one heartbeat she raises her arm to throw, in the next she releases the knife; it flies straight and true, a throw Raven would have been proud of, and sinks into the chest of the queen who had thought to steal her throne.

Her heart beats again, as Nia’s stops.

When the ice queen dies, it’s with her blue eyes frozen open, red blood trickling from her lips and between her fingers.

It takes a moment for the watching crowd to realize what has happened. A small, soundless, timeless moment, in which her hands are still curled in the position in which they’d held the knife, Roan’s sword is still pointed at Bellamy’s throat, Bellamy’s arms are still half-raised in a useless defensive gesture.

It’s Kane who breaks the fragile silence, striding into the arena and clearing his throat.

“All hail,” he says, voice loud and ringing over the crowd, “King Roan of Azgeda and Queen Clarke of Arkadia.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you thought, comments are likely to make my day/week/life. 
> 
> Only two chapters left until the end, I'm tentatively aiming to have the next one up two weeks from now.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	9. after: queen of starlight and sand (pt 4)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We should talk about what happens next,” she says, as she reaches for the buttons on his shirt and gently undoes them, sliding it off his shoulders. “You know, for us.”
> 
> “You’ll officially be queen this time next week, and I need to return to Polis.” His tone is tinged with sorrow. 
> 
> “We’ll only be apart for a short time.” The cloth swipes smoothly over one shoulder, then over the other, before she dips it back in the bucket, wrings it out. “I will have to stay in Arkadia for a brief time, to set everything straight and get my affairs in order. But after that—”
> 
> “You can come home.” 
> 
> “Yes. For good, this time.”

The words seem to echo, thundering in her ears and reverberating through her bones. _Queen Clarke of Arkadia_. They sink into her heart, and with the next breath she takes they fill her lungs.

It had been clever of Kane, to put Roan’s name first; upon hearing it, the new king slowly lowers his sword and Bellamy slowly lowers his arms and both antagonists stand staring uncertainly at each other, before Bellamy breaks the tableau and turns to look at Clarke.

Slowly, he kneels and bows his head, and in a voice that’s gravelly and broken, says, “All hail Queen Clarke of Arkadia.”

To her surprise, Roan follows on Bellamy’s heels, sinking to his own knees and repeating the words gracefully, loud enough for everyone to hear.

There’s a wave of movement as all who stand around the arena kneel, and all who sit bow their heads, and every mouth utters the words, “All hail Queen Clarke of Arkadia,” the sound of it crashing into her like the sea against the hull of a boat.

Hardly any time has passed. Her palm can still feel the smoothness of the bone handle knife, heart still pounding out the same frantic rhythm. A slowing trickle of blood drips down the ice queen’s chin, her eyes glazing over as they stare at the sun. She swallows hard to wet the dryness of her throat and then calls out, “Rise, all.” Her voice is firm, steady. A queen’s voice.

She’s not queen yet, not until the crown rests atop her head, but except for that tiny detail, it’s done.

It’s over.

Her feet carry her to where the two kings stand in the middle of the arena. She wants nothing more than to go to Bellamy, check him over for injuries and ensure his wellbeing, but instead she stops in front of Roan and drops to her knees in the sand.

“King Roan of Azgeda,” she says, “I welcome you.”

A wry smile twists the new king’s lips. There are red bands around his neck from the pressure of Bellamy’s fingers and his mother slumps dead, and yet he smiles. A strange man, one who would make a powerful ally or a powerful enemy. She hopes very much that it’s the former.

“You welcome me?” he asks. “According to the terms of the duel, I am to leave your kingdom immediately and never return.”

“The terms of the duel were forfeit the moment your mother attempted to cheat and forced my hand,” Clarke says, rising to her feet. “I wish to come to new terms with you, terms of an alliance.”

“You killed my mother.”

“I had no choice.”

Roan says nothing, merely scrutinizes her with his icy gaze. “I feel you would make a formidable enemy, Clarke Griffin—Your Majesty,” he says. “Perhaps an agreement can be reached.”

“I have every hope that it can,” she tells him. “I would appreciate it if you would send your army back to your kingdom, but you are welcome to stay for as long as necessary.”

“I will take you up on that offer,” Roan replies, and then hesitates. “My mother—she and I had very different ideas when it comes to rule. We were not close as mother and son should be, and although I can’t say I’m glad that you’ve killed her, I won’t let it become a point of contention between us. I am not the same as her.”

“If you were,” Clarke says, “I wouldn’t be offering an alliance.” She had chosen to trust Roan on a split second decision, when he had kneeled gracefully and acknowledged her power, when he had smiled despite being cheated out of a certain victory. She hoped her faith was well-placed.

Next to him, she’s aware of Bellamy standing stiff and straight, only the strength of his will keeping him upright. The desire to run her hands over him, to hold him to her, tingles in her fingertips, but she ignores it. It can wait.

“Before we agree on any sort of alliance,” Roan says slowly, “there’s something you must know.”

◊◊◊

He refuses to tell her as they take a covered palanquin back to the castle, insisting that it’s something she better see for herself. The mystery of it interests her, but she forces herself not to question further.

Bellamy sits across from her, leaning his head against one of the golden poles that supports the palanquin’s roof and eyes fluttering closed with exhaustion. She examines him covertly, when she can. Dark bruises are already blooming purple around his neck, but aside from that he appears uninjured. Every couple of moments his eyes open and he gives her a tired smile, before allowing them to close again.

She wants to reach across the space between them and hold his hand, but controls the urge. In these, her first hours as almost-queen, it’s important that she appear noble, poised, independent. The queen of a kingdom, not a love-struck girl. There will be time enough for the other later.

The palanquin is lowered to the ground outside the castle’s gates, and Roan courteously waits and allows her to lead the way up the steps. A true homecoming, this time. A throne waiting empty for her return.

Once they’re in the great hall, Roan hesitates again before saying, “If you wouldn’t mind waiting here, Your Majesty? I will return momentarily.”

The moment he vanishes, leaving her alone with the king of Polis and his two right-hand men, she pulls Bellamy tight to her, enfolding him in an embrace.

“You’re alive,” she breathes, pressing her lips to his shoulder.

“ _We’re_ alive,” he replies in a voice that’s still husky and hoarse, dropping a kiss to her forehead. She allows herself to cling to his sturdiness for a moment longer, before pulling away.

Only a couple of minutes pass before Roan returns, his normally calm demeanor shaken and hesitant. He opens his mouth as if to say something, before settling on clearing his throat and stepping to the side.

The woman who stumbles into the great hall behind him is dressed in rags, skin covered with dirt and dried blood, brown hair matted to her head; she’s painfully thin and there are more wrinkles in her face than the last time Clarke had seen her, and she seems to have shrunken, sagged in on herself.

But she recognizes her, and her heart leaps painfully. “Mother?” she whispers, half a second before Kane breathes, “Abigail?”

A smile splinters across the former queen’s face, shedding years from her haggard experience. A single word stumbles from her lips—“ _Clarke_ ”—before Clarke is racing full-tilt towards her mother, stopping up short at the last second to avoid running her over, instead carefully curling her arms around her in a tight embrace.

Her mother smells of mildew and sweat and excrement, a pungent scent that tickles Clarke’s nose. “How are you alive?” she asks wonderingly.

It’s Roan who answers. “Mother never believed in killing someone when they had information she could use. She preferred other…methods.” His voice is dry, but something in his tone suggests that he hadn’t agreed with Nia’s choices. “‘You can only kill someone once,’ she used to say, ‘and then everything they know dies with them.’”

“She tortured her,” Clarke says flatly. It’s not a question; she can see the dried blood, the welts and bruises and poorly healed cuts when she pulls away from the embrace to examine her mother more carefully.

Roan nods. “For information about you. Mother didn’t know whether you were still alive, but she knew that if you were you would come back to Arkadia ready to battle for the throne. It was from her that Mother got the idea for a one-on-one battle to the death, knowing that if it came down to a war Azgeda would likely lose.”

“I’m sorry,” her mother breathes, voice fragile and broken and creaky from months of disuse.

“It’s not your fault,” she tells her, pulling her into another tight embrace. “I would have done the same. And besides, I’m here, I’m alive—we’re _both_ alive, and it’s fine. Everything worked out for the best.”

Her mother is shaking in her arms, and it takes her a moment to realize that she’s weeping, sobs shaking through her with enough force to break her.

“It’s alright,” she murmurs, rocking them gently back and forth. “You’re alright, I’m alright, it’s alright.”

Some time passes before her mother calms enough to stop clinging to Clarke, pulling away to wipe at her tears, leaving streaks of dirt across her cheeks.

“I would have rather died,” she says, voice a little bit stronger with her conviction. “I would have rather died than give Nia the information to harm you. But I was weak—”

“You’re _not_ weak,” Clarke tells her fiercely and her mother nods as if she doesn’t believe it, sniffles one last time before collecting herself and directing her attention over Clarke’s shoulder.

“King Bellamy,” she says with a wavering smile. “It’s nice to see you again.” And then her eyes shift to Kane, and all the hard lines of her face grow suddenly soft. “Marcus,” she murmurs, holding the word in her mouth like it’s sacred.

_Oh_ , Clarke thinks, unable to stop her mouth from falling open as she looks from her mother to Kane and back again. Kane’s face is as soft as her mother’s, a dazed look in his eyes telling her that this was the last thing he’d expected, something he hadn’t even dared hope for. Quickly she steps away from her mother, back to Bellamy’s side, and Kane wastes no time in pulling Abigail into his arms and burying his face in her neck.

“I didn’t see that coming,” she whispers in Bellamy’s ear as her mother’s hand curls in Kane’s hair like she has no intention of letting go.

“I suspected, years ago,” Bellamy whispers back, a soft smile on his face, “but I never knew—after all these years—”

She slips her hand into his and squeezes, knowing what he’s trying to say. After they had spent so many years apart only to find each other again, there’s something awe-inspiring about seeing the act repeated in front of them, with a couple that had, possibly, been through worse.

Roan clears his throat awkwardly. “I hope you don’t hold me accountable for what my mother did to yours,” he says gruffly. “There was little I could have done—”

“It’s fine,” Clarke breaks in. A wry smile twists her lips. “I killed your mother, and you watched mine be tortured.”

A matching smile appears on Roan’s face. “Makes us even,” he says. “I hope then, in that case, that you’re still willing to discuss the terms of an alliance with me.”

“With me?” Clarke asks, surprised. “My mother is still alive—she’s still the queen.”

“I’m not,” Abigail says, pulling away from Kane. “Nia took that title from me, with unfair intent but she followed the law. I haven’t been queen in name for months.”

“But surely now you will be again,” Clarke protests. “I don’t mean to steal your title from you, Mother. Not if you’re still alive.”

“You’re not stealing it, Clarke,” Abigail says gently. “You won it fairly, by the terms of the battle set forth. To become queen is your right, if you want it. I certainly won’t begrudge you for it.”

“It’s not that I don’t want it, but—” She had never before considered the idea of becoming queen while her mother was still alive. It was unheard of, something that wasn’t done. But then again—she glances at Bellamy, a man with no royal blood who had been named king to his people not once, but twice.

Just because something wasn’t done didn’t mean it was wrong to do it that way.

“The people that marched across the desert to be here were following you,” Kane puts in. “You were the one who defeated Nia, and it was you to whom they kneeled. You will do well as queen, Clarke.”

At a loss, she turns to her mother for direction. In response, Abigail sinks to a knee and bows her head low. “I formally renounce any claim to the crown of Arkadia,” she says, “in favour of my daughter. She has my full support and blessing.” She looks up at Clarke expectantly.

“You never have to kneel to me, Mother,” Clarke says, voice weak with surprise. Stronger, she adds, “But if you truly don’t wish to be queen again, then I will take the mantle from you with pleasure.”

“I don’t,” her mother says with certainty. Her eyes flicker to Kane, giving her away, and Clarke smiles to herself.

“It wouldn’t be proper for a queen to marry a mere knight with no lands to his name,” she says mischievously. Both her mother and Kane start at that, glancing at each other and then away, blushes rising in their cheeks. She continues on blithely, “I presume that’s what you both desire?” From the corner of her eye, she catches Bellamy grinning and has to fight to keep a matching grin from her own face.

“I—” Kane coughs, clears his throat. “I would like that, yes.”

“Well?” Clarke prompts her mother, who currently looks as if the world has dropped out from beneath her.

“I suppose I would like that as well.” Her mother’s voice is faint, and Clarke feels a pinch of guilt at putting her on the spot in such an improper manner.

“I’m sure something can be arranged,” she says briskly. “At the moment, there are more pressing matters to attend to.” Turning to Roan, she adds, “We should discuss the terms of our alliance. With Bellamy as well, since Arkadia and Polis will be intrinsically tied going forward.”

“We should,” Roan agrees readily, “but I believe my first order of business is to see my army on their way out of your kingdom. I’ll travel with them outside of the city’s walls tonight and spend the night with them on the sand. I can return tomorrow for further discussion.”

“Perhaps the day after tomorrow,” Clarke suggests. “I have my own people to take care of, as well. An army waiting to hear the outcome of today’s events.”

“I will return in two days’ time, then.” Roan sweeps her a low bow. “The hour grows late. By your leave, Your Majesty?”

The title was not hers, yet, and that he used it was a sign of good faith. She returns his bow, saying, “Of course, you may go. I look forward to speaking with your further, two days hence.”

Soft evening light briefly fills the doorway as he leaves, a splash of gold that vanishes as the door swings shut.

Bellamy sags the moment he’s gone, the strength of will keeping him upright leeching out of him. Alarmed, Clarke places an arm around him, although she could do little to help should he fall.

“You need to rest,” she tells him. “And to eat something. You as well, Mother. I doubt you’ve eaten a full meal in months.”

“I haven’t,” her mother admits. “Nia fed me enough to keep me alive, but barely. Kitchen scraps, mostly.”

They take food from the kitchens—it’s close enough to the dinner hour that the ovens are already burning—to one of the smaller meeting rooms, where the five of them can sit and talk in privacy.

“I haven’t heard from you in years,” Abigail says, her attention directed at Clarke. “There were times when I thought perhaps you were dead but I never gave up hope, not truly. Please, tell me of what happened to you.”

“If you received news from Polis three years ago, you should know that Thelonious Jaha returned and declared war on all nightbloods,” Clarke begins, and goes on to tell her mother of the years she’d spent hidden away at Luna’s camp, how the news had come that her mother had been killed and her throne stolen by the queen of Azgeda; she tells her of the month she’d spent at sea, the journey to the Dead Sand and the army that was gathered there, the preparation for war.

“It never occurred to me that you might yet live,” she admits. “Everyone said for certain that you were dead—”

“Yes, well,” Abigail says with a short laugh, “I doubt very much that Nia wanted news of my survival to get out. It would have made the people far less willing to succumb to her, had they known I still lived. Now tell me—” Her gaze goes between Clarke and Bellamy, curious. “You and King Bellamy, you still have not—?”

“No, we have not yet married, Mother.”

“But you still wish to?”

“Yes,” Clarke says, at the same time Bellamy avows, “More than anything.”

A pleased smile bursts across her mother’s face. “That’s good, then. I had worried—of course, all I desire is for you to be happy.”

“Bellamy makes me happy,” Clarke tells her. “As happy as I could ever dream of being.”

“We could have you wed immediately,” her mother says. “This very week, if that’s what you desire.”

“No,” Clarke says gently, smiling at her mother’s eagerness. “I wish to become queen of Arkadia before I become queen of Polis. And I wish to be wed in Polis, if that’s where I’ll be making my home.”

“Of course,” her mother says, sounding only a little disappointed.

“It does remind me,” Clarke continues, “of something else I’ve been meaning to ask you. I will need a regent in Arkadia, if I am to live in Polis. Would you be willing to take on that duty? Sir Marcus as well if he wishes to stay.”

“I would be honoured,” her mother whispers.

Kane, looking caught off guard by the proposition, hastens to add, “If Abigail wishes for me to stay, then yes—I would be honoured as well.”

“I thought we cleared that up already,” Abigail says teasingly. Her appearance is already much improved after ingesting her first full meal in months, and there’s a twinkle in her eyes, a flush to her cheeks that Clarke can only describe as new love. “Of course I wish for you to stay—as my husband.”

Kane flushes, looking pleased, and runs a hand through his hair.

“I have some questions about that,” Clarke breaks in. “For how long have you two been courting beneath my nose?”

“I’m not sure,” her mother admits. “Since Bellamy became king the first time, perhaps? Marcus had always been a trusted correspondent in the Polis court, especially after Thelonius began his anti-nightblood campaign. But at some point he stopped being a mere correspondent and became my closest friend—and then something more. I hadn’t heard from him in years though, I thought perhaps he was dead.”

“As I believed you to be,” Kane murmurs, reaching out for Abigail’s hand and squeezing it. Clarke’s heart warms to see the affection between them. It’s good for her mother to find something that makes her happy. Especially after everything she’s been through.

They share a bottle of wine and chat until Abigail’s eyes begin fluttering closed, the warmth of the room and the heaviness of the food too much for her to resist.

“Perhaps we should call it a night,” Clarke suggests. “It’s been a long day, for all of us.”

Impossibly long: just that morning, they had set out from the camp in the desert and the future of her kingdom had yet to be decided. Now, she had her mother returned to her, a tenuous alliance with Azgeda, and had become queen in all but name.

She wants nothing more than to sleep—but before that, some time alone with Bellamy, to celebrate all they had gained. His eyes, warm on hers, tell her that he desires the same.

Murmuring agreement, they all stand, Kane placing a steadying arm around he mother’s waist.

“Miller, if you’d follow me,” her mother says, a warm smile on her tired face. “We have some guest apartments down this way.”

They disappear down the hall and, left alone, Clarke turns to Bellamy and slips her hand into his.

“Shall we?” she asks quietly. He smiles brilliantly in answer.

She pulls him along the hallways, until they arrive outside the doors of the rooms that had once been hers. They haven’t changed, much; tidy enough to tell her that her mother had kept them clean while she was gone, with a thin enough layer of dust to tell her that Nia hadn’t bothered to do the same.

Gently, she pushes Bellamy until he’s sitting on the edge of the bed and warns him not to move, before she runs down to the kitchens to fetch a bucket of warm water and a cloth. When she returns, he’s exactly where she left him, looking about the room with interest.

“I grew up in these rooms,” she says, a little self-conscious. Fragments of a younger Clarke are still scattered about the chambers: a mirrored vanity where she had learned to braid her hair, a lacquered wardrobe that likely still held moth-eaten gowns from years past, an oil painting that hangs on the wall, one she had painted herself of the desert landscape at dawn.

“I guessed,” he says with a small smile. “Did you paint that?”

“Yes.” She busies herself with wetting the cloth and then applying it to Bellamy’s dirt- and sand-streaked face. He jumps a little at the first touch of the warm cloth and she tells him, “I’m cleaning you up.”

The smile doesn’t leave his face. “I can clean myself up,” he says, without any protest in his voice. “Roan didn’t harm me.”

She snorts, fingers briefly going to the splotches of purple that ring his neck. “These say otherwise,” she says softly. “And besides, I _want_ to clean you.”

He only hums, eyes closing under her soothing ministrations. She works the cloth over his face and down his neck, rinsing it and wringing it out every couple of strokes; his skin is filthy from the brief moments he’d spent rolling around in the sand, and soon the water in the bucket is a cloudy brown.

“We should talk about what happens next,” she says, as she reaches for the buttons on his shirt and gently undoes them, sliding it off his shoulders. “You know, for us.”

“You’ll officially be queen this time next week, and I need to return to Polis.” His tone is tinged with sorrow.

“We’ll only be apart for a short time.” The cloth swipes smoothly over one shoulder, then over the other, before she dips it back in the bucket, wrings it out. “I will have to stay in Arkadia for a brief time, to set everything straight and get my affairs in order. But after that—”

“You can come home.”

“Yes. For good, this time.”

A smile splits his face, joyful and awestruck. “It’s really over, isn’t it?”

A matching smile stretches her own lips. Happiness is popping in her stomach, filling her veins with golden sunshine. “It is.” The cloth hangs forgotten in her hand, dripping water onto the knees of her dress.

For a moment they sit in wondering silence, thoughts directed towards the future that hovers just over the horizon, a future they’ll at last be able to share together.

“Together,” Bellamy murmurs, echoing her thoughts as if he can read them. A familiar look enters his eyes, and he leans forward to cover her lips with his own.

A squeak of protest escapes her, and she hits his back with the damp cloth. “I wasn’t done yet,” she manages to say, and can feel a smile curl his lips before he pulls away.

“How rude of me,” he says, grinning. “By all means, continue.”

His gaze is hot on her as she runs the cloth down and around his arms, submerges it in the water, wrings it out. She forces herself to use slow, controlled movements as she washes over his chest and down his torso, feeling every ridge of his ribs, every muscle in his hard stomach. His skin feels hot beneath her gentle touch, and her own cheeks are burning.

There’s no sound except the soft slide of cloth against flesh, the splash of water, their shallow breaths. When at last she raises her eyes to meet his, she sees that they’re soft, and dark, as vast as a night sky and as welcoming as a fire-warmed room and a pile of blankets.

“Turn around,” she orders, quietly. He complies, and when his eyes leave hers she feels a sense of loss.

Gently, she moves the cloth down the silky, freckled skin on his back, massaging the muscles as she goes. Tension melts away beneath her fingers, and he sighs.

The bumps of his spine are as solid as the mountain ridges in his home kingdom, smooth flesh flowing over them and down them like rolling plains. She lets her fingers dance across the expanse of his back in meaningless patterns, and he wriggles impatiently beneath her touch.

She runs the cloth one last time over the lower portion of his back, before tossing it in the water and pressing a soft kiss to the nape of his neck. The curls of his hair tickle her nose.

“Finally,” Bellamy grumbles, and wastes no time in turning back to face her, arms banding around her back and lips coming down to—

He pauses when they’re less than an inch apart, eyes meeting hers and filling her vision with their warmth. “I love you,” he says, breath ghosting across her lips, before he softly presses his mouth to hers.

“I love you, too,” she replies, or tries to; the words are lost in the infinitesimal space between them as she curls her fingers in his hair and tugs him closer. The curve of his smile tells her that he knows.

One of his hands goes to the buttons on her dress, undoing them with more practiced ease than the first time they’d done this, and she doesn’t break away from him as he slides the gown down her shoulders, pulls it off her arms.

As always, he pulls away briefly, his eyes and fingers going to the knotted scar above her right breast. A look of sorrow fills his face as he gently brushes his thumb over the raised flesh.

“It’s alright,” she whispers, and he smiles slightly before leaning down to press his lips against the scar.

Pieces of their past would always haunt them, and the scar from an injury she’d sustained three years ago was a visible reminder of that; it would never fade, just as the memories of what they’d done and what they’d been through would forever be woven into the fabric that made up their lives together.

And it was alright, because without that pain they wouldn’t fully be able to experience the joy of this moment, the knowledge that they’d made it through the fire slightly burned, slightly hardened, but still side by side.

It was more than alright. It was perfect.                                           

So she tugs on his hair to bring his face back to hers, to pull his lips against hers, and kisses him forcefully, pressing her lips to his in a way that says, _I won’t let you go. Not again. Not if I can help it_.

He responds in kind and they fall back onto the bed, dust puffing up around them. She’s forced to break away to cough, and he huffs out a chuckle.

“You know, we’ll just have to clean up again after,” he says hoarsely, pressing his lips to her neck.

“I see no problem with that,” she replies, breathless, and his laugh vibrates against her skin.

She wonders if there will ever be a point, years or decades from now, when his laughter doesn’t cause new-spring joy to bloom within her, when his touch doesn’t send shivers racing down her spine, when the husk of his voice doesn’t cause something to spark in her blood. Right now, she could spend hours or days wrapped in his arms, lips and tongue tasting skin, fingers curling in hair, digging into flesh, pulling them closer. Judging by how ardently he responds to her, he feels the same.

“Gods, I love you,” he murmurs against her skin in between feverish kisses, and she sighs into his touch.

There are no words for how much she loves him in return, so she does her best to make him _feel_ it, to write it into his bones. She presses herself close until there’s no space between them, willing herself beneath his skin so she can directly feel the true essence of him.

And when she does—when they are connected in every way possible—she swears she can feel it, twining its way around her heart, filling her lungs, soaring in her blood. His name is a whisper on her lips, breathed into his skin.

The desert night air is cold enough to warrant a fire in the hearth, but the hearth has lain cold for years and she’s not in the mood to call someone to coax a fire to life. Instead, after, they curl together under the heavy warmth of her duvet, dusty skin and quiet breathing, fingers entwined and her head on his shoulder.

He drops off before she does, breathing deepening into soft snores, and she soon follows. Her dreams are of white palace walls and bright spring sunshine, and a bird in the sky that calls her home.

◊◊◊

Early the next morning, they meet Miller—Kane was supposed to meet them as well, but he’s nowhere to be found—in the stables, where their horses are waiting for them. The sun is still low on the eastern horizon when they reach the camp. Evidently, someone had been watching for them, because a horn sounds and several shapes ride to meet them at the rise.

“Took you long enough,” Jasper says, relief colouring his tone. “We thought you’d be back last night, everyone was worried sick.”

“I assume this means you won?” Lexa asks.

“How’s Raven?” Clarke asks Jasper, ignoring Lexa.

Jasper’s brow wrinkles. “She’s the same,” he says carefully.

“Take me to her.”

Jasper leads her to the infirmary tent—and Bellamy, who had chosen to follow, leaving Miller to explain things to Lexa and Gustus—where Raven is lying in the same place she had left her the day before. She’s awake, and manages a small smile when Clarke and Bellamy make their way over to her.

“I take it that the ice queen is dead, then?” she asks.

“She is,” Clarke replies.

“I admit, I was worried you wouldn’t pull it off. Especially when you didn’t return last night.” Something is off about Raven’s voice; it’s slightly stilted, a little too cheery. “I suppose that makes you queen of Arkadia now. Should I bow? I might be able to manage it—”

“Raven,” Clarke says quietly, “what’s wrong?”

At her words, the smile slides off Raven’s face. Just like that, her façade slips away, leaving a woman who’s both broken and brave. “It hasn’t gotten better,” she whispers. “I still can’t feel—”

Clarke kneels at her side, curls her fingers around Raven’s left leg, the one that was still numb, and applies pressure. “Tell me when you feel something.”

Tears are leaking out of Raven’s eyes as she stares blindly at the ceiling of the tent. Slowly, Clarke moves her hands up Raven’s leg, and it’s not until she’s past the knee that Raven gives a little gasp.

“I felt that,” she says, unnecessarily.

“Good,” Clarke says encouragingly. “That’s good.” She exchanges a glance with Bellamy, who has worry sketched between his brows, and shakes her head slightly at him, when Raven’s not watching. “Maybe it will still get better with time.”

“No need to coddle me, Clarke—Your Majesty,” Raven says. “Worst case scenario: it doesn’t. What happens then?”

“Then—” Clarke takes a deep breath. “Then you’ll never walk again. Riding a horse could perhaps be possible, with some assistance.”

Raven’s nose wrinkles at that; she’s the type who loathes being dependent on anyone for anything.

“If that’s how it’s going to be, then—” Her voice wavers, just a little. “Then so be it.”

“Are you in pain?” Clarke asks.

“No. Well—nothing I can’t handle.”

“I need to know exactly, or I won’t be able to help.”

Raven sighs. “My hip aches. Not much, just—enough. I doubt there’s much you can do about it.”

She insists on taking a look anyway, but Raven is right; the bruising and swelling on Raven’s hip has gone down, but there is nothing visibly wrong, nothing she can put her hands on to fix. “There’s nothing I can do to make it better,” she admits, “but I can give you something for the pain.”

“Save it for someone who needs it more. I’ll make do; I’ll have to, if this will be a part of me now.” With effort, and ignoring Clarke’s protests, she heaves herself into a sitting position. “Now, that’s enough about me. Tell me about what happened yesterday. Who was the ice queen’s champion?”

“Her son. The prince.”

“She must have been very confident he would win.”

“He seemed very confident with his sword,” Bellamy says blandly, at the same time Clarke says, “She was, because she tried to cheat.” Even now that it was over and they’d come out unscathed, the memory makes her blood thrum with anger. “She tampered with Bellamy’s sword so that it broke upon impact instead of slicing skin.”

Breath hisses out through Raven’s teeth. “Devilspawn,” she hisses, same as Clarke had. “What happened next?”

“The prince almost killed me, but Clarke killed the queen before he could,” Bellamy says proudly. “A perfect knife throw, right to the heart.”

“You weren’t even watching,” Clarke says.

“She died,” Bellamy points out wryly, “so I assume the throw was good.”

“How did the prince react to you killing his mother?”

“Better than I could have hoped,” Clarke says. “He said it made us even.”

“Because his mother killed yours.”

“Actually…she didn’t.” Clarke shakes her head; a day later, and she still can’t quite believe it. “Nia kept my mother prisoner, tortured her, but she didn’t kill her. My mother is still alive.”

“Clarke, that’s incredible!” Raven exclaims. “You must be so relieved. Does that mean she’s still the queen?”

“Not anymore. She lawfully abdicated the crown when Nia took it from her, and insisted that it was mine should I want it. And I do.” She takes a deep breath. “In a handful of days’ time, I will be queen of Arkadia.”

“And free at last to marry your king,” Raven says, smiling as she looks between the two of them. “So, what comes next?”

“Tomorrow, Bellamy and I will speak with King Roan about the terms of an alliance between our nations. The people at this camp are welcome to come to the city or return to their homes; the Polis army will be leaving for their kingdom in a couple of days. I mean to speak to everyone here about the new developments. But first—there’s something I need to ask of you.”

◊◊◊

That night, a feast is held in the dining hall of the castle, long tables set out and covering every foot of free space. The best silverware is setting the places on all but the last table, and tall tallow candles set in wall sconces illuminate the room invitingly as the last rays of the sun’s evening light fade into darkness outside the wide windows.

Clarke and Bellamy sit together at the head of the high table; to his right are Kane and Miller, and to her left are her mother and Raven, the latter who is to be her new first advisor.

Raven had protested vehemently when Clarke had first offered her the position, citing her lack of noble blood and experience in royal affairs. Bellamy had punched holes in that argument by reminding her that he himself had grown up in the streets, and Clarke had torn it to shreds by telling Raven that, “Not only are you my closest friend, but you’re shrewd and intelligent, and your unfamiliarity with royal affairs will allow you to see things I might otherwise miss. The council needs someone like you.”

“Fine,” Raven had acceded, “but only because I’ve no other home to return to, and living in a palace is infinitely preferable to the streets. And because you two no doubt need someone to set your head on straight every once in a while.”

Now, Raven looks slightly uncomfortable, sitting at her elevated position above the common masses—Jasper, Monty, and the rest of their forlorn crew are seated at one of the lower tables, and offer Clarke a wave every time their eyes meet—but she hides it well, chatting amiably with Clarke’s mother and cutting her pork with delicate care.

In fact, Clarke learns when she overhears fragments of their sentences that she is the topic of their conversation: her mother has taken an immediate liking to Raven, and is telling her some of Clarke’s exploits and mishaps as a child.

“You never told me that you used to hide a knife under your pillow to fight off monsters with,” Bellamy murmurs lowly in her ear, showing that he too had been listening in. There’s a warm smile on his face, crinkling the corners of his eyes.

“I did,” she confirms. “My mother came in to check on me once when I was half asleep, and I scared the devil out of her when I jumped out of bed screaming and wielding a knife in her face.”

“I bet she never did that again.”

“Not without knocking first.” Feeling sated and content, she slips her hand under the table and twines her fingers together with his.

“There are many things we’ve yet to learn about each other,” he muses, clasping her hand tightly.

“And years in which to learn them.” On peaceful nights such as this one, the years beyond their still-young lives stretch out invitingly, a mosaic of adventures and trials, happinesses and sorrows, memories to be crafted together that disappears over the horizon and out of sight.

It’s nearing midnight by the time the dinner finally ends and their guests have left the hall, some given spare apartments while others rent rooms in inns in the city. She and Bellamy return to her own chambers once they have said their farewells to the last lingering guests.

The day had been long, the past few exhausting—three nights ago, she had been woken in her tent by the sound of Azgedan horses rampaging through the camp—and they have little energy for anything other than stripping off their clothes and crawling beneath her sheets.

She curls herself around him, ear to his heartbeat, his hand gently brushing her hair. The warmth of their bodies is more comforting than any winter fire, the slow sound of his breathing more like home than any desert wind.

◊◊◊

“Who are you?” Roan says when Raven enters the council room next to Clarke, swinging between two crutches she had made from old table legs. Raven had insisted that she could move about on her own—that she would have to learn—but Clarke watches her carefully, in case she stumbles and needs a balancing hand.

“I’m your worst nightmare,” Raven replies, flashing him her teeth. She falls a little ungracefully into her chair at Miller’s left side, but recovers nicely. “Clarke may have decided to trust you, Ice Prince, but I have yet to do the same. One of your warriors shot an arrow into my back.”

Roan raises an eyebrow, staring at her down the bridge of his long nose. “Pleasure,” he drawls, the hint of a smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

“Raven is my first advisor,” Clarke says. “Cleverer than any of us have any hope of being, and far better at throwing weapons than I am. You’d do well to be wary of her.”

There are eight of them in total sitting around the polished oval table: Roan, herself, Bellamy, Miller as Bellamy’s new first advisor, Raven as hers, Kane and her mother as representatives of Arkadia once she was gone, and a scribe, to write down the terms of their agreement.

“First and foremost,” Clarke says, once they’re all seated with a cup of tea and pleasantries are out of the way, “I’d like the agreement to focus on peace. A written accord between our three nations to never wage war on the other, and to provide aid should one of our allies require it.”

“And if someone breaks the accord?” Roan asks.

“Then the third nation allies with the first against the second,” Bellamy says. “It would do well to remember, King Roan, that Polis and Arkadia will be joined under one heir before long.”

“Trust me,” Roan says with a sharp grin, “I have no desire to start a war with either of your kingdoms. But all possibilities must be accounted for.”

“That’s fair,” Clarke says. “I also suggest that we ask our heirs to sign the treaty once they come of age. I would like this peace to be intergenerational.”

“What peace ever has been?”

“This can be the first,” Bellamy says firmly. “With our three nations allied, attack by another nation becomes less likely. Luterra keeps mostly to themselves anyway, and Moumon won’t risk attacking when Polis can call on the might of Azgeda. The unclaimed lands have no army to speak of. There would be nothing to break this peace.”

“Except for one thing,” Roan says. “What if your two nations together attack mine?”

“I am good for my word, King Roan,” Clarke says sharply, bristling. “But if you must, remember that Arkadia’s army is small and does not lend much weight in a fight, as you should know from this war that almost happened.”

“I know that Arkadia and Polis together are strong enough to defeat us,” Roan counters wryly. “As demonstrated by the war that almost happened.”

“Not without enormous loss of life on both sides,” Bellamy points out, “which is why the war _didn’t_ happen. There would be no reason for us to attack you when the cost to ourselves would be so high.”

When Roan still looks uncertain, Abigail adds, “There is a modicum of trust inherent in every agreement, King Roan. Remember that we choose to trust you, despite the crimes your mother committed against us.”

With a sigh, Roan concedes. “Just know,” he warns, “that any such betrayal of our treaty will result in a loss of goodwill between our nations for all time.”

“Granted,” Clarke says. “If that’s taken care of, can we move on?”

They spend the rest of the meeting discussing trade agreements—Polis has the most established trade routes and port towns, while Azgeda has secured deals with Moumon through the mountain passes; previously, Arkadia had paid high prices for goods to travel from Polis, something that her mother had aimed to reduce in setting up her marriage with Bellamy. Several hours of bargaining takes them past the lunch hour, and Clarke’s stomach is rumbling by the time they finally put ink to paper and sign the agreement the scribe has drafted.

“So it is done,” Roan says while the scribe is blowing on the ink to dry it. “You know, Azgeda has never been part of a treaty such as this. My mother—and her parents before her, and no doubt her father’s parents—believed in the strength of independence. It is bred into us that to put trust in others is a weakness, and so we build our armies strong, train our warriors from childhood, rely on the teeth of the mountains to keep our enemies away.”

“You will be the start of a new era for your people,” Clarke tells him. “One of peace.”

“I hope so.” Roan’s smile is sharp. “If not, my head will likely roll.”

“The peace will hold. It will hold because it must.”

Ink dry, the scribe carefully rolls up the treaty and seals it with three globs of wax warmed over a candle flame. Into the seals, he carefully presses the sigils of all three kingdoms. “See that it is placed in the archives,” Clarke says and he nods, bowing slightly as he stands and leaves the room.

The door has barely closed behind him before Roan rises. “I should be on my way to Azgeda,” he says. “I have my own coronation to attend to. And the news of my mother’s death to deliver.” There’s no recrimination in his voice, only a statement of fact. “I will see you all in a year’s time, when we meet again to discuss trade.”

“You’ll leave so soon?” Clarke asks. “You’re welcome to stay the night. Please, you should stay at least for dinner—a feast to celebrate the closing of the agreement.”

“Fine,” Roan agrees after a lengthy pause. Does she imagine it, or do his eyes flicker to Raven? “I would be delighted to stay for dinner.”

“A strange man,” Raven comments after Roan has left, claiming he needs some of the city’s fresh air—her eyes had followed him out of the room. “He seems truly unaffected by his mother’s death. The signing of the treaty seemed to unsettle him more.”

“I have a feeling,” Bellamy puts in dryly, “that familial love is also considered a weakness in Azgeda. He and his mother hardly seemed close. After all, she risked his life by choosing him as her champion, something I doubt your mother would ever have done.”

Abigail shakes her head. “I would far rather take part in the fight myself.”

“As to the treaty…” Bellamy continues. “I believe Roan fears his people will see him as weak, not only for signing a treaty but for signing it with their much smaller neighbour that his nation had almost successfully conquered. If Azgeda is as bloodthirsty as he made them out to be, then likely he should have taken Clarke’s head in retribution, instead of agreeing to peace with her.”

“And yet he signed the treaty anyway,” Raven says.

“I believed him, when he said he is not like his mother,” Clarke says firmly. “After all, change must start somewhere. If Roan has the respect of his people, then eventually he’ll be able to change the way they live.”

“For the sake of him and both our nations,” Bellamy murmurs, “let’s hope that’s the case.”

Dinner that night is a quiet affair, compared to the one of the night before: they host it in the desert garden, in the hours just before sunset when the air is neither unbearably hot nor cold. They hold it only between themselves, they who had signed the agreement and they who had witnessed it.

There are toasts aplenty—to a lasting peace, to an accord that is the first of its kind; to the soon-to-be-crowned king, to the soon-to-be-crowned queen, to the king who had been crowned twice; to her mother, who still lived, to love—and the wineglasses are kept constantly full by those who serve the table. By the time night’s frigid breath descends on them, forcing them to call the party to a halt, Clarke’s head is spinning, her face warm, her step unbalanced.

She finds herself leaning heavily on Bellamy as they make their way back to her rooms at the end of the night; his arm is firm around her waist, his stride far steadier than hers, something that she finds unfair.

“You know, we made our first decision together today,” she says as he sits her on the edge of her bed and begins undoing the buttons on the back of her gown. “As king and queen, I mean.”

“A historic moment,” he says with a smile. “Both for us and for the world.”

“We really do have the power to change the world, don’t we?” she murmurs wonderingly. The thought sends a thrill of excitement down her spine.

“We do,” Bellamy agrees. “And we will. For the better. Always for the better.” His voice is full of hard determination, something she loves about him.

She curls her hands around his forearms, tugs until he sits beside her. She fixes her gaze on him, serious, unblinking.

“We already have,” she says.

◊◊◊

The dawn is apricot orange and blushing pink on the morning that Bellamy departs for Polis, five days after the ice queen’s death. It’s early enough that a hint of the night still tinges the sky to the west, a few last stars glittering before being washed out by day. She rides with him and Miller to just outside of the city’s walls, where Polis’ army is gathered in preparation for departure.

“I don’t have to leave tomorrow,” Bellamy had tried to tell her hours before, when they were tangled together and drowsing in the sheets of her bed. “I could stay a couple more days, watch your coronation…”

“No,” she’d replied, although the larger part of her was certainly wishing he didn’t have to go. “Your kingdom needs you; you’ve been gone long enough. And it would be best for perception if you’re not around when I’m raised queen. Our countries will be unified soon enough.”

He’d grumbled half-heartedly, and she’d kissed him to make him stop, which had been immediately effective. They had spent some time discussing their future some months down the road, when she would return to Polis and they would finally be wed, but for the most part their time was spent enjoying each other’s company, in the rare private moments they had together.

“It will be winter, most likely, when you arrive in Polis,” he’s saying now, as the dunes of sand disappear beneath their horses’ hooves. “A beautiful season, you’ll see. The frost glitters like crystal in sunlight, and the whole countryside looks as though it’s made of shards of glass.”

“A winter wedding,” she muses. Bellamy glances over at her.

“Unless you’d prefer to wait for spring,” he says.

“No. I think we’ve waited long enough.” More than long enough; three and a half years had passed since she and Bellamy had become betrothed, since they had first known that they truly wished to marry each other.

“More than long enough,” he agrees, echoing her thoughts. A fond smile is on his face as he glances at her.

“I can’t believe my mother will be wed before me,” she says.

“I can’t believe my most trusted advisor is abandoning me to be her husband,” Bellamy grouses, jokingly.

“ _Most_ trusted?” Miller grumbles, affronted, and Bellamy hurriedly amends, “ _One_ of my most trusted advisors.”

“I’m sure Miller and Lincoln will do fine in that capacity,” Clarke says. “Assuming Lincoln hasn’t seen the city burned again in the time that you’ve been away.”

Bellamy chuckles, and her own face lifts in a smile. It seemed impossible that the things that had happened were far enough in the past to be made light of, and yet here they are; joking of a past that had almost broken them and dreaming of a future that would bind them together.

“You must be looking forward to returning home,” she adds, and Bellamy’s face softens.

“I know there will be much work awaiting me when I return,” he admits, “but yes. I’ve missed it.” A sort of longing enters his voice whenever he speaks of Polis, a brand of nostalgia that makes her own heart ache.

“I’m sure the people will be glad to have you back, as well.”

“I’m not so certain of that,” he says wryly. “I did bring war upon them, last time I was king.” Before she can protest, he adds, “I know, I know. I did more good than harm. But I don’t know if I’ll ever believe that I did the best I could.”

“That’s what makes you a great king,” she tells him. “You always seek to be better. And you will be, Bellamy. _We_ will be.” He smiles at her unsubtle reminder that this is no longer something he has to do alone.

“How am I supposed to survive the next few months without you?”

“The same way you did before.” She grins wickedly. “By asking yourself ‘What would Clarke do?’ before making any major decision.”

“The answer would always be ‘Gamble my life and freedom and hope it works out,’” he banters back, “and I don’t know that that’s always the solution.”

“It worked out last time.”

“I don’t know if I’d want to take my chances.” He glances over at her, eyes tender and soft. “I’ll miss you, you know.”

“I know.” He had told her a number of times the night before, words falling breathlessly from his lips between what seemed like every kiss. “I’ll miss you, too.”

“Well I, for one,” Miller mutters, “am glad I don’t have to travel all the way back to Polis with the both of you. This has already been quite enough.” Despite the tone of his words, there’s a small smile on his face.

“I’ll miss you, also, Miller,” Clarke says. “Don’t ever think I’m leaving you out.”

Miller rolls his eyes, before direction his attention forwards. “Looks like everyone’s about ready to leave,” he observes.

The camp has vanished like a mirage under the early morning sun, all tents packed away, cook fires extinguished, horses saddled. Most of the army is already mounted, watching expectantly as the trio rides towards them.

“Eager to return home?” Bellamy calls out when they’re within shouting distance, and is greeted with a cheer. “Gather anything you have not already. We’ll depart within the quarter hour.”

He dismounts his horse and helps Clarke off hers so that they can talk face to face. Kindly, Miller rides towards the army on the pretense of making sure all is in order, so that they can have a last few moments alone.

For the first few seconds of those last minutes they only stare at each other. She does her best to memorize the lines of his face: sorrow is tightening the skin around his eyes, steely determination hardening his jaw. His freckles are numerous and beautiful under the desert sun, his eyes a liquid brown.

“I’ll miss you,” he says, again.

With one hand she reaches up to cup his face, running her thumb along the line of his jaw. “I know,” she says softly, teasing. “It won’t be so long this time. A couple of months and I’ll be home. No war to divide us, with luck. A couple of months between now and the rest of our lives.”

“When you put it that way…” he murmurs, before cupping the back of her neck and pulling her towards him for a searing kiss. It’s hot enough to melt her and she does, sinking against him and losing track of time until Miller awkwardly clears his throat behind them.

They break apart; her face is burning and Bellamy’s cheeks are red.

“My king,” Miller says wryly, “everything is ready to go. The only thing we’re waiting on is you.”

“No more excuses then, I suppose,” Bellamy says regretfully. He wraps his arms around Clarke, pulling her close to him, before dropping one last chaste kiss to her lips. “I’ll see you soon,” he says, in lieu of a goodbye.

“Soon,” she agrees. “The time will pass quickly, I’m sure. Take care of yourself. I love you.”

“I love you, too,” he says, mounting his horse. He waves at her, a little sadly, before heeling the gelding towards his army.

She watches from the sand as he rides to the front of the column and motions them onward. The horses’ hooves kick of clouds of dust, miniature storms, as they ride eastward, disappearing in a matter of minutes over the dunes and into the shimmering heat.

Only once she can no longer see them does she mount Starlight and turn back, alone, for the city.

◊◊◊

She turns slowly in front of her mottled vanity mirror, evaluating the way the gown falls over her hips. She had found it hanging in the wardrobe, a thing of midnight blue and moonlight silver, miraculously untouched after years of neglect. It wasn’t until this moment that she realizes just how much she’s physically changed in the years she’s been away from Arkadia. The fabric hangs loose over her breasts and hips, pouches out slightly at the shoulders; any extra weight she had carried had melted away after years spent in Luna’s camp.

Her face, too—she thinks—is less round than it had once been, her cheekbone now angular and prominent, her jawline defined. She no longer looks the girl of eighteen, bound for a strange kingdom to meet her prospective husband. The events of the past four years had shaped her into who she now was, every inch the queen she would soon officially become.

A knock sounds at her door.

“Come in,” she calls, still staring at the woman in the mirror.

“You look beautiful,” her mother says, coming to stand beside her. “Are you ready?” The former queen is holding an ornate silver box, which Clarke knows holds her crown.

She starts to take a breath to steady herself, and realizes she doesn’t need to. “Yes,” she says, meaning it. Becoming queen was what she had been born for, and the prospect doesn’t frighten her in the least.

“Let’s go, then.”

With one last look at her reflection, she turns and follows her mother out of her rooms, down the hall towards the audience chamber. The halls are silent, the castle seemingly empty, their soft footsteps echoing.

They stop outside the doors to the audience chamber, and her mother turns to face her. Her eyes are wet, a tremulous smile on her face. “I’m so proud of you,” she whispers. “You’ll do this kingdom proud, I know you will.”

“I only hope I’ll do as well as you, Mother,” she replies.

“You’ll do better,” her mother says, before pulling her into an embrace that’s brief but tight. “Now—”

She pulls open the great doors, and hundreds of people inside turn to watch them. A white carpet scrolls from the doors to the throne, which sits where it always has at the rear of the chamber, bathed in afternoon sunlight that streams in through high windows. When she sat upon it, she would glow as if chosen by the gods, which was why the coronation ceremony was always held at this precise hour of the day.

From the crowd, she picks out a few familiar faces: Marcus, who tears his eyes away from her mother to give her a smile; Raven, who sits on a chair at the front of the crowd, pride written all over her features; Lexa beside the towering form of Gustus, her green eyes cool and intense. She recognizes servants of the castle who had been there since she was young—Ravia, the bony cook, and Stefan, the elderly bookkeeper, countless others—as well as soldiers from the army who just over a week before had been willing to fight for this kingdom. For her.

Side by side, she and her mother glide down the carpet, towards the throne. Their footsteps are silent, muffled by the carpet, but she feels each one reverberate through her bones. Every moment lands heavy on her, clings to her shoulders like a cloak.

At the foot of the throne her mother stops, and kneels, and Clarke mounts the dais alone, blood thundering in her ears. The throne is carved from precious stone, white-gold like the desert sand in summer sun and glittering where the light hits it like millions of stars. It has no cushion, and when she sits the stone is cool through the silk of her dress.

The traditional words roll off her tongue smoothly despite her nerves. “As queen, I vow to put the needs of my people above the needs of myself. I vow to do proud by my kingdom, to pour my heart and soul into the endless sands and endless skies of this beautiful nation. I vow to always look forward, to seek to better myself every step of the way. This is my pledge to you. Will you accept me as your queen?”

In answer, the people in the room place a hand to their heart and sink to their knees, bowing their head to her. Every single one. Tension she hadn’t been aware she was carrying seeps out of her, and she relaxes fractionally.

Alone out of everyone, Abigail rises, the silver box still held between her hands. They’re shaking, slightly. Slowly, she mounts the steps; once beside Clarke, she opens the box and removes the crown, a simple silver circlet with diamonds embedded around the circumference, the centrepiece a flaming sun made of golden tourmaline.

The crown is light as it settles over her brow, a comforting weight that instantly becomes a part of her. Tenderly, her mother threads the crown through her elaborately braided hair, stroking the crown of her head briefly before stepping away.

“Clarke Griffin,” her mother says formally, tears glittering at the corners of her eyes, “Queen of Arkadia, Land of a Thousand Stars, you may rise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The epilogue is complete and will be posted within the next week! In the meantime, please leave a comment with your thoughts. 
> 
> Love you all <3


	10. Epilogue: we build what could be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s nearing midwinter when she sees Polis again, shining white palace and shimmering grey walls standing out bright against the snow covered hills. Impatience rushes through her, a nearly uncontrollable urge to kick her heels into her horse and race forward, inconsiderate of the people with her.
> 
> She doesn’t. She’s a queen now—the silver circlet is cold on her brow, a constant reminder—and there are some things queens simply don’t do. Besides, she’s been waiting for months; she can wait a couple hours more.
> 
> (She tells herself this rationally, while her heart is pounding out a frantic now, now, now.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At last, the end is here! Thank you so much to everyone for following along on this adventure with me, whether you've been doing so since the first chapter or the last. Reading WIPs can be a bit chancy, but you mean the world to writers like me and give us the motivation to continue writing. 
> 
> Massive thanks to my betas, @griffinsbi and @midnightbeast for taking time out of their otherwise busy lives to give me a second opinion. 
> 
> Without further ado:

It’s nearing midwinter when she sees Polis again, shining white palace and shimmering grey walls standing out bright against the snow covered hills. Impatience rushes through her, a nearly uncontrollable urge to kick her heels into her horse and race forward, inconsiderate of the people with her.

She doesn’t. She’s a queen now—the silver circlet is cold on her brow, a constant reminder—and there are some things queens simply _don’t_ do. Besides, she’s been waiting for months; she can wait a couple hours more.

(She tells herself this rationally, while her heart is pounding out a frantic _now, now, now._ )

They had set out from Arkadia later than she would have liked, bogged down for what seemed unending weeks with signing her name below her mother’s to maintain treaties already in place, and journeying around the kingdom to visit towns and villages to let her people see her face, a tradition for the new queen. There had been the matter of overseeing and hosting her mother’s wedding—a joyous occasion to be sure, although it had only made her miss her own betrothed more—and settling the last of her affairs in order, before setting the nation’s reins once more in the hands of her capable mother.

It had been the dying days of autumn before they finally set out on the road to Polis, and then they had been beset by several early winter storms that had forced them to take shelter for days; the freshly fallen snow on the roads had slowed them down further, until it seemed some days they only covered a handful of miles.

“You must be eager to see your king, Your Majesty,” Raven says from her side. She rides a dappled grey mare, one who is too docile for Raven’s fiery spirit but obeys even the lightest touch of her hands.

“More than anything,” Clarke replies candidly. Subconsciously, she lets her right hand rest on the slight swell of her belly under her woolen riding dress.

The pregnancy had only been confirmed by her mother two months before, and she had debated sending Bellamy a letter with the news before ultimately deciding against it. It seemed too big, too world-changing, to be contained in a simple message that was more likely to get lost than be delivered; and besides, she wanted to be there when he heard the news. She wanted to experience that with him.

The eastern gate of the city opens up for them, the guard in the tower letting them through upon seeing her crown shining in the sun. Commonfolk line the streets, watching with curiosity as their new queen and her procession ride past. The palace comes into sight, its walls mostly scrubbed clean of ash and soot but the statues out front still shattered. Upon seeing it, her last vestige of patience snaps and she kicks her horse into a canter, not caring about the people watching her fly past.

She rides over the bridge, through the open gate and inside the palace’s walls; slides off of Starlight’s back and runs up the steps towards the front doors where—

Bellamy is waiting for her.

Miller is behind him, along with Lincoln and Octavia, but she hardly registers their faces as she throws herself into him, twining her arms around his neck and pulling herself onto her toes so her lips can meet his. His hands fit themselves to her hips and he twirls her around, laughing against her mouth.

“I’ve missed you,” she says, breathless, when he sets her down.

“I’ve missed you, too. How was the journey? I was beginning to worry.”

“Too long,” she gripes. “I know you love the snow, but I’ve yet to see anything remotely enchanting about it.”

“You will,” he promises. “You look cold, would you like to come inside?”

She’d forgotten entirely about the cold nipping her cheeks and nose and fingers in her joy over seeing him, but she nods. “Can I see you alone for a moment?”

“Of course.” With strict instructions to the others to wait until the rest of her party arrived, he pulls her inside the doors and into the coat room. “What is it?”

In answer, she pushes back her cloak and rests her hands on her stomach. The bump isn’t obvious, not unless attention is being drawn to it. Bellamy’s eyes widen in awed surprise, and he fits his hands over hers, so he can feel the curved flesh himself.

“Clarke…” he breathes.

“I’m pregnant.” She swallows. “Maybe I should have sent you a message, but…”

He cuts her off with a gentle kiss, one hand on her lower back pulling her into him. When he breaks away he sees that his eyes are shining with tears, his mouth open in a smile that has no intention of leaving.

“You’re pregnant,” he says, his voice a hushed whisper. “We’re going to have a child.”

“I hope he looks like you.”

“ _He_?” Bellamy asks. “Clarke, our first child is most certainly going to be a daughter.”

She laughs. “First?” she teases. “Already thinking ahead, I see.”

“I plan on filling this palace with our children.” He’s only half-joking, although there’s a twinkle in his eye.

“We can discuss that later.” She stands on her toes to give him a quick kiss. “Come, I believe Kane’s eager to see you again.”

◊◊◊

The wedding is held the next morning in the garden. Snow drapes the branches of the leafless trees in shimmering white gowns, lanterns dangling like golden earrings, and the sky is a pale, cloudless blue. Frosty air nips at his face as he stands in a coat of cream and gold in front of the frozen waterfall. Octavia is at his side, wearing a gown of silver and rose. Kane stands at his other side to officiate the wedding, and Lincoln, Miller, and Raven sit prominently in the front row.

The audience, seated on wrought-iron chairs facing the waterfall, is small: the lords and ladies of Polis’ larger towns, their sons and daughters, the knights in the guard. Just enough people to witness the wedding and its legitimacy; a larger party, to which more of the cityfolk had been invited, would be held that evening.

Clarke enters the garden like something out of a dream, and his breath stops. She walks on her mother’s arm, her golden hair in an elaborate twist under a cap of pearls like snowdrops, her gown a perfect white with falls of lace at the sleeves. There’s a beaming smile on her face, tears in her eyes, the distension of her stomach just barely noticeable through the fabric of her dress.

She’s so beautiful. There’s tears in his own eyes, and his smile wavers as she slowly walks towards him.

Her skin is cold when she takes his hands in hers, a delicate redness to the tip of her nose. Her eyes are like the sea, brilliantly blue and fathomless, their waters dripping down her cheeks.

“King Bellamy Blake of Polis and Queen Clarke Griffin of Arkadia,” Kane says, “you are here today to join yourselves, and by extension your kingdoms, in a union of person and of state that will bind you together, heart and soul, body and mind, for the rest of your years. In choosing to wed—”

Kane’s words settle into his skin, become part of him, and his whole world narrows down to the feel of Clarke’s hands in his, her eyes on his, her smile and tears.

“Bellamy Blake,” Kane finishes, “do you accept kingship of Arkadia and all that entails: treating its people as your own, to protect them life and limb from whatever troubles may beset them?”

“I do,” he replies. The words get stuck in his throat, shake upon being spoken aloud.

“Clarke Griffin, do you accept queenship of Polis and all that entails: treating its people as your own, to protect them life and limb from whatever troubles may beset them?”

“I do,” Clarke says. Her voice doesn’t tremble at all.

“Then,” Kane says, “before the lords and ladies and sworn knights of Polis, I declare you formally wed.”

Bellamy pulls Clarke towards him, and kisses her; her lips are cold, soft, and still manage to fill him with warmth. When he releases her, her cheeks are wet.

So are his. And Abigail, Raven, Lincoln, Octavia—even Kane’s eyes are unnaturally shiny.

“I love you,” he murmurs to his new wife, loud enough so only she will hear. The words aren’t enough to explain the bursting feeling in his chest, so he repeats them: “I love you.”

If possible, her smile widens even further, and she raises his hand to place a kiss on his knuckles. “I love you, too,” she whispers. “Now and forever.”

That night, they open the doors of the palace to the city, until the great hall is filled to bursting with people eager to see their king and his new queen, to offer their regards or receive a blessing. There’s dinner and dessert, live music and dancing, a party to rival the one they had thrown all those years ago.

A little wine-drunk and feeling that they’d paid their dues to the people of the city, he takes Clarke by the arm and pulls her out of the crowded hall. She goes willingly, stumbling a little over her feet. Radiant happiness beams out of her, out of both of them, and all he wants is a couple selfish moments with her to himself.

The door to one of the meeting rooms is open, light and children’s voices flooding out into the hallway, and they stop to look inside.

A fire is roaring in the hearth, warming the room, and Lincoln is sprawled beside it, Octavia curled up beside him. On every piece of furniture and every spare inch of carpet are children, some nearing sleep while others are wide-eyed awake. He recognizes some of them as children of the staff, while others must have only wanted to escape their parents and the party downstairs.

“Lincoln,” one of the children pleads, “tell us a story!”

“A story?” the scribe asks. “What kind of story would you like to hear?”

There’s a hasty, mumbled discussion before one boy says, “Tell us about the beginning of the world.”

He laughs. “The beginning of the world? Okay.” He pauses, gathering his thoughts, and Bellamy looks at Clarke with an amused smile. She smiles back at him, one hand resting protectively, tenderly, on her belly. _Look at what we’ve built together_ , he thinks to himself.

“We don’t know much about the beginning of the world,” Lincoln begins, “but we do know this: the world was born in smoke and fire…”

_And so were we_ , Bellamy thinks, pride blooming in his stomach as he reaches for Clarke’s hand.

For the first time in as long as he can remember, he feels truly at peace. A contented calmness that fills his soul, his blood and his bones with light. The calm won’t last forever, he knows that; there will always be another enemy, another war, another fire that must be survived before it can be put out.

But looking at Clarke, his wife, his queen, mother of their unborn child, he finds he doesn’t care.

Life is a battle, continuous and constant and always uphill, a battle for their souls, for the world, for the people they loved—

They would fight it together.

◊

_end._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please, please let me know what you thought - either in a comment on here, or my tumblr ask box is always open (@forgivenessishardforus). 
> 
> Also! Let me know if you'd be interested in reading a prequel (Bellamy's story of his first rise to king, pre-Bellarke obviously) or a sequel set some point in the future. 
> 
> Thanks again for reading, lots of love <3


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